The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume
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Title: The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6)
       The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2)

Author: Hippolyte A. Taine

Annotator: Svend Rom

Translator: John Durand, 1880

Posting Date: June 18, 2008 [EBook #2582]
Release Date: April, 2001

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MODERN REGIME V2 ***




Produced by Svend Rom





THE ORIGINS OF CONTEMPORARY FRANCE, VOLUME 6

THE MODERN REGIME, VOLUME 2

by Hippolyte A. Taine


Contents:

BOOK FIFTH. The Church.

     Chapter I. Moral Institutions

     Chapter Ii.

     Chapter Iii

Book Sixth. Public Instruction.

     Chapter I.

     Chapter Ii.

     Chapter Iii. Evolution Between 1814 And 1890.


*****

     After Taine's death in March 1893, his nephew André
     Chevrillon arranged his last manuscripts on the Church
     and Education for publication and wrote the following
     introduction which also tells us much about Taine and
     his works

*****




PREFACE By André Chevrillon.

"To treat of the Church, the School, and the Family, describe the modern
milieu and note the facilities and obstacles which a society like our
own encounters in this milieu, such was the program of the last[5101]
section of the "Origins of Contemporary France." The preceding volume is
a continuation of the first part of this program; after the commune and
the department, after local societies, the author was to study moral
and intellectual bodies in France as organized by Napoleon. This study
completed, this last step taken, he was about to reach the summit. He
was about to view France as a whole, to comprehend it no longer
through a detail of its organs, in a state of formation, but its actual
existence; no longer isolated, but plunged, along with other occidental
nations, into the modern milieu, experiencing with them the effects of
one general cause which changed the physical and intellectual condition
of men; which dissolved sentiments formerly grouping them together, more
or less capable at length of adapting themselves to new circumstances
and of organizing according to a new type suited to the coming age that
now opens before us.

Only a part of this last volume was written, that which relates to the
Church and to public instruction. Death intervened and suddenly arrested
the pen. M. Taine, at this moment, was about completing his analysis of
subordinate societies in France.--For those who have followed him thus
far it is already clear that the great defect of the French community
is the fragmentation of the individuals, who isolated, dwindling, and
prostrate at the feet of the all-powerful State, who, due to remote
historical causes, and yet more so by modern legislation, have been made
incapable of "spontaneously grouping around a common interest."
Very probably--and of this we may judge by two sketches of a plan,
undoubtedly provisional, but the ideas of which were long settled in his
mind--M. Taine would have first described this legislation and defined
its principles and general characteristics. He meant to show it more
and more systematic, deliberately hostile to collective enterprise,
considering secondary bodies not as "distinct, special organs,"
endowed with a life of their own, "maintained and stimulated by private
initiation," but as agents of the State "which fashions them after
a common pattern, imposes on them their form and prescribes their
work."--This done, this defect pointed out, the author was to enumerate
the consequences flowing from it, the social body entirely changed, "not
only in its proportions but in its innermost texture," every tendency
weakened by which individuals form groups that are to last longer than
themselves, each man reduced to his own self, the egoistic instinct
enhanced while the social instinct wastes away for want of nourishment,
his daily imagination solely concerned with life-long aims,
incapacitated for politics as he is "lacking spheres of action in which
he may train himself according to his experiences and faculties", his
mind weakening in idleness and boredom or in a thirst for pleasure and
personal success,--in short, an organic impoverishment of all faculties
of cohesion, leading to the destruction of the natural centers of
grouping and, consequently, to political instability.[5102]

One association of special import remains, the most spontaneous, the
deepest rooted, so old that all others derive from it, so essential
that in any attack upon it we see even the substance of the social body
decaying and diminishing. On the nature of the Family; on its profound
physiological origins; on its necessary role in the prolongation and
"perpetuation of the individual" by affording him "the sole remedy for
death"; on its primitive constitution among men of our own race; on its
historic organization and development "around the family home"; on the
necessity of its subsistence and continuance in order to insure the
duration of this home; on its other needs, M. Taine, with his knowledge
of man and of his history, had given a good deal of thought to
fundamental ideas analogous to those which he has consecrated to the
classic spirit, to the origin of honor and conscience, to the essence
of local society, so many stones, as it were, shaped by him from time
to time and deeply implanted as the foundations of his criticism of
institutions. Having set forth the proper character and permanent wants
of the Family he was able to study the legislation affecting it, and,
first, "the Jacobin laws on marriage, divorce, paternal authority and on
the compulsory public education of children; next, the Napoleonic laws,
those which still govern us, the Civil Code" with that portion of it
in which the equality and leveling spirit is preserved, along with "its
tendency to regard property as a means of enjoyment" instead of the
starting-point and support of "an enduring institution."--Having exposed
the system, M. Taine meant to consider its effects, those of surrounding
institutions, and to describe the French family as it now exists. He had
first studied the "tendency to marriage"; he had considered the motives
which, in general, weaken or fortify it, and appreciated those now
absent and now active in France. According to him, "the healthy ideal of
every young man is to found a family, a house of infinite duration, to
create and to rule." Why in modern France does he give his thoughts to
"pleasure and of excelling in his career"? Why does he regard marriage
"without enthusiasm, as a last measure, as a 'settling-down,' and not as
a beginning, the commencement of a veritable career, subordinating
all others to it and regarding these, pecuniary and professional, as
auxiliary and as means?"--After the tendency to marriage, "the tendency
to paternity." How does the shrunken family come to live only for
itself? In what way, in default of other interests,--homestead, domain,
workshop, lasting local undertakings,--how does the heart, now deprived
of its food by the lack of invisible posterity, fall back on affection
for visible progeny?[5103] In a country where there are few
openings, where careers are overcrowded, what are the effects of this
paid idolatry[5104], and, to sum up in one phrase, in what way does the
French system of to-day tend to develop the most fatal of results, the
decline in the birth rate?

Here the study of institutions on a grand scale terminated. Formerly,
M. Taine had contemplated a completion of his labors by a description
of contemporary France, the product of origins scrutinized by him and
of which he had traced the formation. Having disengaged his factors he
meant to combine them, to show them united and acting in concert, all
centering on the great actual facts which dominate the rest and which
determine the order and structure of modern society. As he had given a
picture of old France he aimed to portray France as it now is, with
its various groups,--village, small town and large city,--with its
categories of men, peasants, workmen, bourgeois, functionaries and
capitalists; with the forces that impel each class along, their
passions, their ideas, their desires. Besides the numerical statistics
of person he meant to have set forth the moral statistics of souls.
According to him, psychological conditions exist which render the social
activity of men possible or impossible. And, especially, "in a given
society, there is always a psychological state which provokes the state
of that society." It was his aim to seek out in the novel, in poetry, in
the arts since 1820, that is to say in all works that throw light on the
various and successive kinds of the reigning ideal--in philosophy, in
religion, in industry, in all branches of French action and thought--the
signs of the psychological tendencies of modern Frenchman in this or
that social condition. What would this book have been? M. Taine had
sketched it out so far back, he had abandoned it for so long a time and
never alluded to it, that nothing remains by which we can form any
idea of it. But, in this undertaking demanding so much science, so much
intuition, so much experience of accurate observation, of general views
and precise generalization--in this vast study requiring such profound
knowledge, not alone of France but of societies offering points of
comparison with her, we may be certain that the author of Notes
sur Paris, Notes sur l'Angleterre, of the Ancien Régime, the critic
accustomed to interpret civilizations, literature and works of art,
the thinker, in fine, who, to prepare himself for the greatest tasks he
undertook, traveled five times over France, studying its life with
the eyes of an artist, in the light of history and of psychology, ever
preceding his philosophic study with visual investigation, would have
been equal to the task.[5105]

Already for several years, M. Taine, aware that his time was short, had
narrowed the limits of the work he was engaged upon. But what his work
lost in breadth and in richness of detail it would have gained in
depth and in power. All his master ideas would have been found in it,
foreshortened and concentrated. Always seeking in this or that group of
them what he called his generators, intellectual and moral as well as
political, he would have described all those which explain the French
group. Unfortunately, here again the elements are wanting which allow
one to foreshadow what this final analysis and last construction might
have been. M. Taine did not write in anticipation. Long before taking
the pen in hand he had derived his most significant facts and formed
his plan. He carried them in his brain where they fell into order of
themselves. Ten lines of notes, a few memoranda of conversations--faint
reflections, to us around him, of the great inward light--are all that
enable one to attempt an indication of the few leading conceptions were
to complete "Les Origines de la France Contemporaine."

"Le Milieu Moderne", was to have been the title of the last book. The
question here is how to discover the great characteristics of the period
into which European societies entered and about were to live. Rising
to a higher point of view than that to which he had confined himself
in studying France, M. Taine regarded its metamorphosis as a case of
transformation as general as the passage of the Cité antique over to
the Roman Empire over to the feudal State. Now, as formerly, this
transformation is the effect of a "change in the intellectual and
physical condition of men"; that is to say, in other words, in the
environment that surrounds them. Such is the advent of a new geological
period, of a glacial period, for example, or, more precisely, "the very
slow and then accelerated upheaval of a continent, forcing the submarine
species which breathe by gills to transform themselves into species
which breathe by lungs." It is impossible to divine in what sense this
adaptation takes place if we do not comprehend the event, that is to
say if we do not perceive its starting-point and the innate force which
produces it. According to Taine, this force, in the present case, is the
progress the increasing authority of positive, verifiable science. What
a definition he would have given of science and its essence! What a
tableau of its progress, the man whose thought was matured at the moment
when the scientific spirit entered into history and literature; who
breathed it in his youth with the fervid and sacred enthusiasm of a poet
seeing the world grow brighter and intelligible to him, and who, at the
age of twenty-five, demanded of it a method and introduced this into
criticism and psychology in order to give these new life--the mechanical
equivalent of heat, natural selection, spectroscopic analysis,
the theory of the microbes, recent discoveries in physics and the
constitution of matter, research into historic origins, psychological
explanation of texts, extension of oriental researches, discoveries of
prehistoric conditions, comparative study of barbaric communities--every
grand idea of the century to which he has himself contributed, all those
by which science embraces a larger and larger portion of the universe,
he saw them containing the same essence; all combining to change the
conception of the world and substitute another, coherent and logical in
the best minds, but then confused and disfigured as it slowly descends
to the level of the crowd.--He would have described this decent, the
gradual diffusion, the growing power of the new Idea, the active ferment
which it contains after the manner of a dogma, beneficent or pernicious
according to the minds in which it lodges, capable of arming men and
of driving them on to pure destruction when not fully comprehended, and
capable of reorganizing them if they can grasp its veritable meaning.

Its first effects are simply destructive, for, through Darwinism,
through experimental psychology, through the physiology of the brain,
through biblical exegesis, through the comparative study of savage
communities and their moral systems, the new concepts at first shocks
the religious idea which it tends to replace; even, with the half-
cultivated and in the minds of novices, it tends to pure negation, to
hostility against existing religions. To every social gathering around
the religious idea that explains and sustains it, what a disturbance in
the secular system formed by the co-ordination and mutual adaptation of
laws, customs, morality, and institutions! What a rupture of the inward
equilibrium which maintains man passive and tranquil! The consequent
mental agitation will lead to agitation, impulsion, ambitions,
lassitude, despondency, and disorder in all the sentiments which had
thus far maintained every species of society, the family, the commune,
the Church, free association and the State!--Now, along with the
immediate effects of science on the intellectual habits of men consider
the effects of its application to their material condition; at first,
their increased well-being, their power increased, then the rupture of
the ties that bind them to their birthplace, the concentration of masses
of workmen in the towns to which they are attracted by great and rapid
industrial development, the influx of new ideas, of every species of
information, the gradual decline of the old hereditary prejudices of
caste and parish which act automatically as instincts, and are useful
as instincts to the small groups in which the individual is born and
in which he lives. How could such a profound change in the condition of
humanity fail to undermine everywhere the order of things which group
men together? Why should not the new milieu at once attack all ancient
forms of society? For, at the moment of its establishment, there exists
in Europe a general form of society manifest through features in common;
a monarchy--hereditary royalty, dynastic but frequently limited, at
least in fact,--a privileged nobility performing military service as a
special function, a clergy organized as a Church, proprietary and
more or less privileged, local or special bodies also proprietary--
provinces, communes, universities, brotherhoods, corporations--laws and
customs which base the family on paternal authority, perpetuating it on
the natal soil and by social rank; in brief, institutions which modern
ideas disturb in every direction, the first effect of which is,
while developing the spirit of doubt and investigation, to break down
subordination to the king, to the gentleman, to the noble, and, in
general, to dissolve society founded on heredity. Such phenomena are
already observable everywhere, the ruin of feeble corporations by the
state, its constant tendency to interference, to the absorption of every
special service and the descent of power into the hands of a numerical
majority.--What plan, then, governs these societies in the way of
reorganization, and, since they all belong to a common type, what are
the common resources and difficulties of adaptation? On what lines must
the metamorphosis be effected in order to arrive at a viable creations?
And, abandoning the general problem in order to return to contemporary
France, grown up and organized under our own eyes, how does the great
modern event affect it? How does "this common factor combine with
special factors, permanent and temporary," belong to our system? With
the French, whose hereditary spirit and character are easily defined,
in this society founded on Napoleonic institutions moved by our
"administrative mechanism," what are the peculiar tendencies of a
leveling democracy which seeks immediate establishment? Among the
maladies which are special with us--feeble birth-rate, political
instability, absence of local life, slow industrial and commercial
development, despondency and pessimism--can an aptitude for
transformation which we do not possess be distinguished in the sense
demanded by the new milieu? The knowledge we have of our origins, of
our psychology, of our present constitution, of our circumstances, what
hopes are warranted?

M. Taine could not have replied to all these questions. If, twenty years
ago, on the morrow after our disasters, just as we once more set about
a new organization, putting aside literature, art, and philosophy, noble
contemplation and pure speculation, abandoning works already projected,
he gave himself up to the technical study of law, political economy and
administrative history; if, for twenty years, he secluded himself and
devoted himself to his task--at what a cost of prolonged effort, with
what a strain his mental faculties, with what weariness and often with
what dissatisfaction!--if he shortened his life, it was to discharge
what he deemed a duty to that suffering France which he loved
with tender and silent passion, the duty of aiding in her cure by
establishing the general diagnosis which a philosopher-historian
was warranted in presenting after a profound study of its vital
constitution. The examination finished, he felt that he had a right to
offer the diagnosis. Not that his modesty permitted him to foretell the
future or to dictate reforms. When his opinion was asked in relation to
any reform he generally declined giving it. "I am merely a consulting
physician," he would reply; "I do not possess sufficient details on that
particular question--I am not sufficiently familiar with circumstances
which vary from day to day." In effect, according to him, there is no
general principle from which one can deduce a series of reforms. On the
contrary, his first recommendation would have been not to try to find
simple solutions in political and social matters, but to proceed by
experiments, according to temperaments, and accepting the irregular
and the incomplete.--One becomes resigned to this course by a study
of history and by acquiring "the sense of surrounding facts and
developments." Here do we find the general remedy for the destructive
effects produced by the brusque progress of science, and she herself
furnishes this remedy, when, from the hasty and the theoretical, she
becomes experimental and builds on the observation of facts and their
relations. "Through psychological narration, through the analysis of
psychological conditions which have produced, maintained, or modified
this or that institution, we may find a partial solution to each
question of reform," gradually discovering laws and establishing the
general conditions that render possible or impossible any given project.
When constituted and then developed, reorganized, respected and applied
to human affairs, the sciences of humanity may become a new instrument
of power and civilization, and, just as the natural sciences have taught
us to derive profit from physical forces, they may teach us to benefit
by moral forces. M. Taine believed that the French were very well
qualified for this order of study: if any other people possess
superior mental faculties in respect of memory or a better knowledge
of philology, he thought we had in our favor a superiority of the
psychological sense.

Except for such beneficial generalities which may provide general
hygienic guidelines, could M. Taine have suggested immediate remedies?
It is scarcely probable. In any even, he was not a partisan for
hasty decentralization. When, under the influence of a bad system, an
organization has contracted a vice that reaches its vital organs, the
following treatment nearly becomes mandatory;[5106] in any event, no
sudden modification of it must be thought of; all that can be done is
to lessen its pernicious effect by resorting to make-shift or short
term measures. Taking advantage of unforeseen circumstances, using great
circumspection, noting favorable symptoms that had impressed him--for
example a certain new birth of the spirit of association under the Third
Republic--leaving to political authorities the care "of adjusting means"
to the diversity and mobility of things, we may believe that M. Taine
would have confined himself to indicating in what sense we could, with
prudence, lay our course. To do this, it sufficed for him to sum up his
diagnosis and lay down the conditions of duration and progress. In a
matter of such vital import nobody can speak for him. Accordingly, if
the conclusion is not written, whoever knows how to read his thought may
divine it. The work, such as it is, is finished; it already contains his
ideas in full; the intelligent eye has only to follow them and to note
their consequences and combination.

André Chevrillon

Menthon, St-Bernard, October, 1893.





BOOK FIFTH. THE CHURCH.




CHAPTER I. MORAL INSTITUTIONS




I. Napoleon's Objectives.

     Centralization and moral institutions--Object of the State
     in absorbing Churches.--Their influence on civil society.

After the centralizing and invading State has taken hold of local
societies there is nothing left for it but to cast its net over moral
societies[5107], and this second haul is more important than the first
one; for, if local societies are based on the proximity of physical
bodies and habitations, the latter are formed out of the accord which
exists between minds and souls; in possessing these, the hold is no
longer on the outside but on the inside of man, his thought, his will;
the incentive within is laid hold of, and this directly; then only can
he be fully mastered, and disposed of at discretion. To this end, the
main purpose of the conquering State is the possession of the Churches;
alongside as well as outside of itself, these are the great powers of
the nation; not only does their domain differ from its own but, again it
is vaster and lies deeper. Beyond the temporal patrimony and the small
fragment of human history which the eyes of the flesh perceive, they
embrace and present to mental vision the whole world and its first
cause, the total ordinance of things, the infinite perspective of a past
eternity and that of an eternity to come. Underneath the corporeal and
intermittent actions which civil power prescribes and regulates, they
govern the imagination, the conscience and the affections, the whole
inward being, that mute, persistent effort of which our visible acts are
simply the incomplete expressions and rare outbursts. Indeed, even when
they set limits to these, voluntarily, conscientiously, there is no
limit; in vain do they proclaim, if Christian, that their kingdom is not
of this world; nevertheless, it is, since they belong to it; masters
of dogma and of morals, they teach and command in it. In their
all-embracing conception of divine and human things, the State, like a
chapter in a book, has its place and their teachings in this chapter are
for it of capital importance. For, here do they write out its rights and
duties, the rights and duties of its subjects, a more or less perfect
plan of civil order. This plan, avowed or dissimulated, towards
which they incline the preferences of the faithful, issues at length,
spontaneously and invincible from their doctrine, like a plant from its
seed, to vegetate in temporal society, flower and fructify therein
and send its roots deeper down for the purpose of shattering or of
consolidating civil and political institutions. The influence of a
Church on the family and on education, on the use of wealth or of
authority, on the spirit of obedience or of revolt, on habits of
initiation or of inertia, of enjoyment or of abstention, of charity or
of egoism, on the entire current train of daily practice and of dominant
impulses, in every branch of private or public life, is immense, and
constitutes a distinct and permanent social force of the highest order.
Every political calculation is unsound if it is omitted or treated
as something of no consequence, and the head of a State is bound to
comprehend the nature of it if he would estimate its grandeur.




II. Napoleon's opinions and methods.

     Napoleon's opinions on religion and religious belief.--His
     motives in preferring established and positive religions.
     --Difficulty in defining the limit between spiritual and
     temporal authority.--Except in Catholic countries, both
     united in one hand.--Impossible to effect this union in
     France arbitrarily.--Napoleon's way of attaining this end by
     another process.--His intention of overcoming spiritual
     authority through temporal interests.

This is what Napoleon does. As usual with him, in order to see deeper
into others, he begins by examining himself:

"To say from whence I came, what I am, or where I am going, is above my
comprehension. I am the watch that runs, but unconscious of itself."

These questions, which we are unable to answer,

"drive us onward to religion; we rush forward to welcome her, for
that is our natural tendency. But knowledge comes and we stop short.
Instruction and history, you see, are the great enemies of religion,
disfigured by the imperfections of humanity.... I once had faith. But
when I came to know something, as soon as I began to reason, which
happened early, at the age of thirteen, my faith staggered and became
uncertain."[5108]

This double personal conviction is in the back-ground of his thinking,
when he drafted the Concordat:

"It will be said that I am a papist.[5109] I am nothing. In Egypt I was
a Moslem; here I shall be a Catholic, for the good of the people. I
do not believe in religions. The idea of a God!" (And then, pointing
upward:) "Who made all that?"

Imagination has already decorated this great name with its legends. Let
us content ourselves with those already existing; "the restlessness of
man" is such that he cannot do without them; in default of those already
made he would fashion others, haphazard, and still more strange. The
positive religions keep man from going astray; it is these which render
the supernatural definite and precise;[5110] "he had better catch
it there than pick it up at Mademoiselle Lenormand's, or with some
fortune-teller or a passing charlatan." An established religion

"is a kind of vaccination which, in satisfying our love of the
marvelous, protects us against quacks and sorcerers;[5111] the priests
are far better than the Cagliostros, Kants, and the rest of the German
mystics."

In sum illuminism and metaphysics,[5112] speculative inventions of the
brain or of a contagious overexcitement of the nervous system, all these
illusions of gullible men, are basically unhealthy, and, in general,
anti-social. Nevertheless, since they are part of human nature, let us
accept them like so many streams tumbling down a slope, but on condition
that they remain in their own beds and that they have many but no new
ones and never one bed alone for itself.

"I do not want a dominant religion, nor the establishment of new
ones. The Catholic, Reformed, and Lutheran systems, established by the
Concordat, are sufficient."[5113]

Their direction and force are intelligible, and their irruptions can be
guarded against. Moreover, the present inclinations and configurations
of the human soil favor them; the child follows the road marked out by
the parent, and the man follows the road marked out when a child.

"Listen,[5114] last Sunday, here at Malmaison, while strolling alone in
the solitude enjoying the repose of nature, my ear suddenly caught the
sound of the church-bell at Rueil. I was moved, so strong is the force
of early habits and education! I said to myself, What an impression this
must make on simple, credulous people!"

Let us gratify them; let us give back these bells and the rest to the
Catholics. After all, the general effect of Christianity is beneficial.

"As far as I am concerned,[5115] I do not see in it the mystery of
the incarnation, but the mystery of social order, the association of
religion with paradise, an idea of equality which keeps the rich from
being massacred by the poor."

"Society[5116] could not exist without an inequality of fortunes, and an
inequality of fortunes without religion.[5117] A man dying of starvation
alongside of one who has abundance would not yield to this difference
unless he had some authority which assured him that God so orders it
that there must be both poor and rich in the world, but that in
the future, and throughout eternity, the portion of each will be
changed.[5118]"

Alongside of the repressive police exercised by the State there is a
preventive police exercised by the Church. The clergy, in its cassock,
is an additional spiritual gendarmerie, much more efficient than the
temporal gendarmerie in its stout boots, while the essential thing is to
make both keep step together in concert.

Between the two domains, between that which belongs to civil authority
and that which belongs to religious authority, is there any line of
separation?

"I look in vain[5119] where to place it; its existence is purely
chimerical. I see only clouds, obscurities, difficulties. The civil
government condemns a criminal to death; the priest gives him absolution
and offers him paradise."

In relation to this act, both powers operate publicly in an inverse
sense on the same individual, one with the guillotine and the other with
a pardon. As these authorities may clash with each other, let us
prevent conflicts and leave no undefined frontier; let us trace this out
beforehand; let us indicate what our part is and not allow the Church to
encroach on the State.--The Church rally wants all; it is the accessory
which she concedes to us, while she appropriates the principal to
herself.

"Mark the insolence of the priests[5120] who, in sharing authority with
what they call the temporal power, reserve to themselves all action on
the mind, the noblest part of man, and take it on themselves to reduce
my part merely to physical action. They retain the soul and fling me the
corpse!"

In antiquity, things were much better done, and are still better done
now in Moslem countries.

"In the Roman republic,[5121] the senate was the interpreter of heaven,
and this was the incentive of the force and strength of that government.
In Turkey, and throughout the Orient, the Koran serves as both a civil
and religious bible. Only in Christianity do we find the pontificate
distinct from the civil government."

And even this has occurred only in one branch of Christianity.
Everywhere, except in Catholic countries,

"in England,[5122] in Russia, in the northern monarchies, in one part of
Germany, the legal union of the two powers, the religious control in
the hands of the sovereign, 'is an accomplished fact.' One cannot govern
without it; otherwise, the repose, dignity, and independence of a nation
are disturbed at every moment."

It is a pity that "the difficulty[5123] cannot be overcome as with
Henry VIII. in England. The head of the French government would then, by
legislative statute, be the supreme head of the French Church."

Unfortunately, this is repugnant to France. Napoleon often tries to
bring it about, but is satisfied that in this matter "he would never
obtain national cooperation"; once embarked," fully engaged in the
enterprise, "the nation would have abandoned him." Unable to take this
road, he takes another, which leads to the same result. As he himself
afterwards states, this result "was, for a long time and always, the
object of his wishes and mediations.... It is not his aim[5124] to
change the faith of his people; he respects spiritual objects and wants
to rule them without meddling with them; his aim is to make these square
with his views, with his policy, but only through the influence of
temporal concerns." That spiritual authority should remain intact; that
it should operate on its own speculative domain, that it to say, on
dogmas, and on its practical domain, namely, on the sacraments and on
worship; that is should be sovereign on this limited territory, Napoleon
admits, for such is the fact. We have only to open our eyes to see
it; right or wrong, spiritual authority on this distinct domain is
recognized sovereign, obeyed, effective through the persistent, verified
loyalty of believers. It cannot be done away with by supposing it
non-existent; on the contrary, a competent statesman will maintain it in
order to make use of it and apply it to civil purposes. Like an engineer
who comes across a prolific spring near his factory, he will not try to
dry it up, nor let the water be dispersed and lost; he has no idea
of letting it remain inactive; on the contrary, he collects it, digs
channels for it, directs and economizes the flow, and renders the water
serviceable in his workshops. In the Catholic Church, the authority to
be won and utilized is that of the clergy over believers and that of the
sovereign pontiff over the clergy.

"You will see," exclaimed Bonaparte, while negotiating the Concordat,
"how I will turn the priests to account, and, first of all, the
Pope!"[5125]




III. Dealing with the Pope.

     Services which he obliges the Pope to render.--Resignation
     or dismissal of the old bishops.--End of the constitutional
     Church.--Right of appointing bishops and of sanctioning
     curés given to the First Consul.

"Had no Pope existed," he says again,[5126] "it would have been
necessary to create him for the occasion, in the same way that the Roman
consuls appointed a dictator for difficult circumstances." Only such a
dictator could effect the coup d'état which the First Consul needed,
in order to constitute the head of the new government a patron of
the Catholic Church, to bring independent or refractory priests under
subjection, to sever the canonical cord which bound the French clergy to
its exiled superiors and to the old order of things, "to break the
last thread by which the Bourbons still communicated with the country."
"Fifty émigré[5127] bishops in the pay of England now lead the French
clergy. Their influence must be got rid of, and to do this the authority
of the Pope is essential; he can dismiss or make them resign." Should
any of them prove obstinate and unwilling to descend from their thrones,
their refusal brings them into discredit, and they are "designated[5128]
as rebels who prefer the things of this world, their terrestrial
interests to the interests of heaven and the cause of God." The great
body of the clergy along with their flocks will abandon them; they will
soon be forgotten, like old sprouts transplanted whose roots have been
cut off; they will die abroad, one by one, while the successor, who is
now in office, will find no difficulty in rallying the obedient around
him, for, being Catholic, his parishioners are so many sheep, docile,
taken with externals, impressionable, and ready to follow the pastoral
croisier, provided it bears the ancient trademark, consists of the same
material, is of the same form, conferred from on high and sent from
Rome. The bishops having once been consecrated by the Pope, nobody save
a Gregory or some antiquarian canonist will dispute their jurisdiction.

The ecclesiastical ground is thus cleared through the interposition of
the Pope. The three groups of authorities thereon which contend with
each other for the possession of consciences[5129]--the refugee bishops
in England, the apostolic vicars, and the constitutional clergy--
disappear, and now the cleared ground can be built on. "The Catholic
religion being declared[5130] that of the majority of the French people,
its services must now be regulated. The First Consul nominates fifty
bishops whom the Pope consecrates. These appoint the curés, and the
state pays their salaries. The latter may be sworn, while the priests
who do not submit are sent out of the country. Those who preach against
the government are handed over to their superiors for punishment. The
Pope confirms the sale of clerical possessions; he consecrates the
Republic." The faithful no longer regard it askance. They feel that
they are not only tolerated, but protected by it, and they are
grateful.[5131] The people recover their churches, their curés, the
forms of worship to which they are almost instinctively accustomed, the
ceremonial which, to their imagination, belongs to every important act
of their lives, the solemn rites of marriage, baptism, burial, and
other sacramental offices.--Henceforth mass is said every Sunday in each
village, and the peasants enjoy their processions on Corpus-Christi
day, when their crops are blessed. A great public want is satisfied.
Discontent subsides, ill-will dies out, the government has fewer
enemies; its enemies, again, lose their best weapon, and, at the same
time, it acquires an admirable one, the right of appointing bishops and
of sanctioning the curés. By virtue of the Concordat and by order of the
Pope, not only, in 1801, do all former spiritual authorities cease
to exist, but again, after 1801, all new titularies, with the Pope's
assent, chosen, accepted, managed, disciplined,[5132] and paid by
the First Consul, are, in fact, his creatures, and become his
functionaries.




IV. The Pope, Napoleon's employee.

     Other services expected of the Pope.--Coronation of Napoleon
     at Notre-Dame.--Napoleonic theory of the Empire and the Holy
     See.--The Pope a feudatory and subject of the Emperor.
     --The pope installed as a functionary at Paris, and
     arch-chancellor on spiritual matters.--Effect of this for Italy.

Over and above this positive and real service obtained from the
sovereign pontiff, he awaits others yet more important and undefined,
and principally his future coronation in Notre Dame. Already, during the
negotiations for the Concordat, La Fayette had observed to him with a
smile:[5133] "You want the holy oil dropped on your head"; to which he
made no contradictory answer. On the contrary, he replied, and probably
too with a smile: "We shall see! We shall see!" Thus does he think
ahead, and his ideas extend beyond that which a man belonging to the
ancient régime could imagine or divine, even to the reconstruction of
the empire of the west as this existed in the year 800. "I am not Louis
XIV.'s successor," he soon declares,[5134] "but of Charlemagne.... I am
Charlemagne, because, like Charlemagne, I unite the French crown to
that of the Lombards, and my empire borders on the Orient." In this
conception, which a remote history furnishes to his boundless ambition,
the terrible antiquitarian finds the gigantic and suitable framework,
the potent, specious terms, and all the verbal reasons he requires.
Under Napoleon, the successor of Charlemagne, the Pope can be only a
vassal: "Your Holiness is the sovereign of Rome, but I am its emperor,"
the legitimate suzerain. "Provided with "fiefs and counties" by this
suzerain, the Pope owes him political fealty and military aid; failing
in this, the endowment, which is conditional, lapses and his confiscated
estates return to the imperial domain to which they have never ceased to
belong.[5135] Through this reasoning and this threat, through the rudest
and most adroit moral and physical pressure, the most insidious and most
persevering, through spoliation, begun, continued and completed by the
abduction, captivity and sequestration of the Holy Father himself, he
undertakes the subjection of the spiritual power: not only must the
Pope be like any other individual in the empire,[5136] subject by his
residence to territorial laws, and hence to the government and the
gendarmerie, but again he must come within the administrative lines;
he will no longer enjoy the right of refusing canonical investiture to
bishops appointed by the emperor,[5137] "he will, on his coronation,
swear not to take any measures against the four propositions of the
Gallican Church,"[5138] he will become a grand functionary, a sort of
arch-chancellor like Cambacérès and Lebrun, the arch chancellor of the
Catholic cult.--Undoubtedly, he resists and is obstinate, but he is not
immortal, and if he does not yield, his successor will: it suffices to
choose one that is manageable, and to this end things work in the next
conclave.

"With my influence and our forces in Italy," Napoleon says
afterwards,[5139] "I did not despair, sooner or later, by one means
or another, of obtaining for myself the control of the Pope, and,
thenceforward, what an influence, what a lever on the opinion of the
rest of the world!"

"Had I returned victorious from Moscow, I intended to exalt the Pope
beyond measure, to surround him with pomp and deference. I would have
brought him to no longer regretting his temporality; I would have made
him an idol. He would have lived alongside of me. Paris would have
become the capital of Christendom, and I would have governed the
religious world the same as the political world.... I would have had
my religious as well as legislative sessions; my councils would have
represented Christianity; the Popes would have been merely their
presidents. I would have opened and closed these assemblies,
sanctioned and published their decrees, as was done by Constantine and
Charlemagne." In 1809, the restoration of the great Carlovingian and
Roman edifice had begun; its physical foundations were laid. By virtue
of a decree,[5140] "the expenses of the Sacred College and of the
Propaganda were declared imperial." The Pope, like the new dukes and
marshals, was endowed with a landed income on "property in different
parts of the empire, two millions of rural revenue free of all taxation.
"Necessarily" the Pope must have two palaces, one at Paris and the other
at Rome. He is already nearly fully installed in Paris, his person being
all that was lacking. On arriving from Fontainebleau, two hours off, he
would find everything belonging to his office; "the papers[5141] of the
missions and the archives of Rome were already there." "The Hôtel Dieu
was entirely given up to the departments of the court of Rome. The
district around Notre Dame and the Ile Saint-Louis was to be the
headquarters of Christendom!" Rome, the second center of Christendom,
and the second residence of the Pope, is declared[5142] "an imperial and
free city, the second city of the empire"; a prince of the empire, or
other grand dignitary, is to reside there and "hold the court of the
emperor." "After their coronation in the cathedral of Notre Dame at
Paris, the emperors" will go to Italy before the tenth year of their
reign, and be "crowned in the church of St. Peter at Rome." The heir to
the imperial throne "will bear the title and receive the honors of
the King of Rome." Observe the substantial features of this chimerical
construction. Napoleon, far more Italian than French, Italian by race,
instinct, imagination, and souvenirs, considers in his plan the future
of Italy, and, on casting up the final accounts of his reign, we
find that the net profit is for Italy and the net loss is for France.
"Napoleon wanted to create the Italian kingdom over again,[5143]
combining Piedmont, Tuscany, etc., in one united independent nation,
bounded by the Alps and the sea.... This was to be the immortal trophy
erected in his honor.... He awaited impatiently the birth of a second
son that he might take him to Rome, crown him King of Italy and proclaim
the independence of the great peninsula under the regency of Prince
Eugene." Since Theodoric and the Lombard kings, it is the Pope who,
in preserving his temporal sovereignty and spiritual omnipotence, has
maintained the sub-divisions of Italy; let this obstacle be removed and
Italy will once more become a nation. Napoleon prepares the way,
and constitutes it beforehand by restoring the Pope to his primitive
condition, by withdrawing from him his temporal sovereignty and limiting
his spiritual omnipotence, by reducing him to the position of managing
director of Catholic consciences and head minister of the principal cult
authorized in the empire.




V. State domination of all religion.

     Services which Napoleon desires or expects from the French
     clergy.--His Roman idea of civil power.--Development of this
     conception by the jurists.--Every religious association must
     be authorized.--Legal statutes which fix the doctrine and
     discipline of the four authorized Churches.--Legal
     organization of the Catholic Church.--Its doctrine and
     discipline to be that of the old Gallican Church.--New
     situation of the French Church and new rôle of civil power.
     --It sets aside its ancient obligations.--It retains and
     augments its regalian rights.--The Church of France before
     1789 and after 1802.--Increased preponderance and complete
     dominion of the civil power.

In carrying out this plan, he will use the French clergy in mastering
the Pope, as the Pope has been made use of in mastering the French
clergy. To this end, before completing the Concordat and decreeing the
Organic Articles, he orders for himself a small library, consisting of
books on ecclesiastical law. The Latin works of Bossuet are translated
for him, and he has drawn up an exposition of the Gallican parliamentary
doctrine. The first thing is to go down to the roots of the subject,
which he does with extraordinary facility, and then, recasting and
shaping all theories to suit himself, he arrives at an original,
individual conception, at once coherent, precise, and practical; one
which covers the Cæsar and which he applies alike to all churches,
Catholic, Lutheran, Calvinist, and even Jewish, to every religious
community now existing and in time to come. His master-idea is that
of the Roman legists and of ancient imperial jurisprudence; here, as
elsewhere, the modern Cæsar goes back beyond his Christian predecessors
to Constantine, and farther still, to Trajan and Augustus.[5144] So long
as belief remains silent and solitary, confined within the limits of
individual conscience, it is free, and the State has nothing to do with
it. But let it transgress these limits, address the public, bring people
together in crowds for a common purpose, manifest itself openly, it is
subject to control; forms of worship, ceremonies, preaching, instruction
and propaganda, the donations it calls forth, the assemblies it
convenes, the organization and maintenance of the bodies it engenders,
all the positive applications of the inward reverie, are temporal works.
In this sense, they form a province of the public domain, and come
within the competency of the government, of the administration and
of the courts. The State has a right to interdict, to tolerate, or
to authorize them, and always to give them proper direction. Sole and
universal proprietor of the outward realm in which single consciences
may communicate with each other, it intervenes, step by step, either to
trace or to bar the way; the road they follow passes over its ground and
belongs to it; its watch, accordingly, over their proceedings is, and
should be, daily; and it maintains this watch for its own advantage,
for the advantage of civil and political interests, in such a way that
concern for the other world may be serviceable and not prejudicial to
matters which belong to this one. In short, and as a summary, the First
Consul says, in a private conversation:

"The people want a religion, and this religion should be in the hands of
the government!"[5145]

On this theme, his jurists, old parliamentarians or conventionalists,
his ministers and counselors, Gallicans or Jacobins, his spokesmen in
the legislative assembly or the tribunate, all imbued with Roman law
or with the Contrat Social are capital megaphones for proclaiming the
omnipotence of the State in polished sentences. "The unity of public
power and its universality," says Portalis,[5146] "are a
necessary consequence of its independence." "Public power must be
self-sufficient; it is nothing if not all..." Public power cannot
tolerate rivals; it cannot allow other powers to establish themselves
alongside of it without its consent, perhaps to sap and weaken it. "The
authority of a State might become precarious if men on its territory
exercise great influence over minds and consciences, unless these men
belong to it, at least in some relation." It is careless "if it remains
unfamiliar or indifferent to the form and the constitution of the
government which proposes to govern souls," if it admits that the limits
within which the faith and obedience of believers "can be made or
altered without its support, if it has not, in its legally recognized
and avowed superiors, guarantees of the fidelity of inferiors." Such was
the rule in France for the Catholic cult previous to 1789, and such is
to be the rule, after 1801, for all authorized cults. If the State
authorizes them, it is "to direct such important institutions with a
view to the greatest public utility." Solely because it is favorable to
"their doctrine and their discipline" it means to maintain these intact
and prevent "their ministers from corrupting the doctrine entrusted to
their teaching, or from arbitrarily throwing off the yoke of discipline,
to the great prejudice of individuals and the State."[5147] Hence, in
the legal statute by which a Church is incorporated and realizes what
she is, it states in precise terms what it exacts or permits her to be;
henceforward she shall be this or that and so remain; her dogmas and her
canons, her hierarchy and her internal regime, her territorial
subdivisions and circumscriptions, her regular or casual sources of
income, her teachings and her liturgy are definite things and fixed
limitations. No ecclesiastical assembly, Protestant, Catholic, or
Israelite, shall formulate or publish any doctrinal or disciplinary
decision without the government's approbation.[5148] No ecclesiastical
assembly, Protestant, Catholic, or Israelite, shall be held without the
approval of the government. All sacerdotal authorities, bishops and
curés, pastors and ministers of both Protestant confessions,
consistorial inspectors and presidents of the Augsbourg Confession,
notables of each Israelite circumscription, members of each Israelite
consistory, members of the central Israelite consistory, rabbis and
grand-rabbis, shall be appointed or accepted by the government and paid
by it through an executory" decision of its prefects. All the professors
of Protestant or Catholic seminaries shall be appointed and paid by the
government. Whatever the seminary, whether Protestant or Catholic, its
establishment, its regulations, its internal management, the object and
spirit of its studies, shall be submitted to the approval of the
government. In each cult, a distinct, formulated, official doctrine
shall govern the teaching, preaching, and public or special instruction
of every kind; this, for the Israelite cult, is" the doctrine expressed
by the decisions of the grand Sanhedrin";[5149] for the two Protestant
cults, the doctrine of the Confession of Augsbourg, taught in the two
seminaries of the East, and the doctrine of the Reformed Church taught
in the Genevan seminary;[5150] for the Catholic cult, the maxims of the
Gallican Church, the declaration, in 1682, of the assembly of the
clergy[5151] and the four famous propositions depriving the Pope of any
authority over sovereigns in temporal matters, subordinating the Pope to
ecumenical councils in ecclesiastical and spiritual concerns, and which,
in the government of the French Church, limit the authority of the Pope
to ancient usages or canons inherited by that Church and accepted by the
State.

In this way, the ascendancy of the State, in ecclesiastical matters,
increases beyond all measure and remains without any counterpoise.
Instead of one Church, it maintains four, while the principal one, the
Catholic, comprising 33 million followers, and more dependent than under
the old monarchy, loses the privileges which once limited or compensated
it for its subjection.--Formerly the prince was its temporal head, on
condition that he should be its exterior arm, that it should have the
monopoly of education and the censorship of books, that he should use
his strong arm against heretics, schismatics and free-thinkers. Of all
these obligations which kings accepted, the new sovereign frees himself,
and yet, with the Holy See, he holds on to the same prerogatives and,
with the Church, the same rights as his predecessors. He is just as
minutely dictatorial as formerly with regard to the details of
worship. Sometimes he fixes the fees and perquisites of the priests
for administering the sacraments: "This charge is a purely civil and
temporal operation, since it resolves itself into a levy of so many
pence on the citizen. Bishops and priests should not be allowed to
decide here.[5152] The government alone must remain the arbiter
between the priest who receives and the person who pays." Sometimes,
he intervenes in the publication of plenary indulgence: "It is
essential[5153] that indulgences should not be awarded for causes which
might be contrary to public order or to the welfare of the country; the
political magistrate is equally interested in knowing what the authority
is that grants indulgences; if its title to act is legal, to what
persons indulgences are granted, what persons are entrusted with their
distribution, and what persons are to fix the term and duration of
extraordinary prayers."--Thus bound and held by the State, the Church is
simply one of its appendices, for its own free roots by which, in this
close embrace, it still vegetates and keeps erect have all been cut off
short; torn from the soil and grafted on the State, they derive their
sap and their roots from the civil powers. Before 1789, the clergy
formed a distinct order in temporal society and, above all others, a
body possessing property and exempt from taxes, a tax-payer apart which,
represented in periodical assemblies, negotiated every five years
with the King himself, granted him subsidies and, in exchange for this
"disinterested gift," secured for itself concessions or confirmations of
immunities, prerogatives and favors. Today, it is merely a collection
of ordinary individuals and subjects, even less than that--an
administrative staff similar to that of the university, of the
magistrature, of the treasury, and of the woods and forests, even more
closely watched and bridled, with more detailed precautions and stricter
interdictions. Before 1789, the curés and other second-class officials
were, for the most part, selected and installed without the prince's
intervention, sometimes by the bishop of the diocese or a neighboring
abbé, sometimes by independent collators, by the titular himself,[5154]
by a lay patron or a chapter, by a commune, by an indultaire, by the
pope, while the salary of each titular, large or small, was his private
property, the annual product of a piece of land or of some indebtedness
attached to his office and which he administered. Nowadays, every
incumbent, from the cardinal-archbishop down to a canon, cantonal curé,
and director or teacher in a seminary, is appointed or accepted by the
civil power to which he swears fidelity. His salary, set down in the
budget, is simply that of a public employee, so many francs and centimes
for which he comes monthly to the office of the treasury paymaster,
along with others of his colleagues who are employed by the State in
non-Catholic cults, together with others, his quasi-colleagues,
whom the State employs in the university, in the magistrature, in the
gendarmerie, and in the police.[5155] Such, in all branches of social
life, is the universal and final effect of the Revolution. In the
Church, as elsewhere, it has extended the interference and preponderance
of the State, not inadvertently but intentionally, not accidentally
but on principle.[5156] "The Constituent" (Assembly), says Siméon,
"had rightly recognized that, religion being one of the oldest and most
powerful means of government, it was necessary to bring it more than
it had been under the control of the government." Hence, the civil
constitution of the clergy; "its only mistake was not to reconcile
itself with the Pope." At present, thanks to the agreement between Pope
and government (Napoleon, First Consul), the new régime completes
the work of the ancient régime and, in the Church as elsewhere, the
domination of the centralizing State is complete.




VI. Napoleon Executes the Concordat.

     Reasons for suppressing the regular clergy.--Authorized
     religious associations.--The authorization revocable.

These are the grand lines of the new ecclesiastical establishment, and
the general connections by which the Catholic Church, like an apartment
in a building, finds itself included in and incorporated with the State.
It need not disconnect itself under the pretext of making itself more
complete; there it is, built and finished; it cannot add to or go beyond
this; no collateral and supplementary constructions are requisite which,
through their independence, would derange the architectural whole, no
monastic congregations, no body of regular clergy; the secular clergy
suffices. "Never[5157] has it been contested that the public power had
the right to dissolve arbitrary institutions which do not insist on the
essence of religion and which are judged suspicious or troublesome to
the State." As a principle, all religious communities should be judged
in this way; for they are spontaneous bodies; they form their own
organization, and without the aid of the State, through the free will
of their members; they live apart, according to the proper and peculiar
statute which they adopt, outside of lay society, alongside of the
established Church, under distinct chiefs chosen by themselves,
sometimes under foreign ones, all more or less independent, all, through
interest and by instinct, gathered around the Holy See, which, against
diocesan authority and episcopal jurisdiction, serves them as protector.
Formerly, the monks[5158] formed the Pope's militia; they recognized
no other sovereign, and thus were they more to be feared by governments
than the secular clergy. The latter, without them, "would never have
caused embarrassment;" henceforth there will be no other body.[5159] "I
want bishops, curés, vicars, and that's all! Religious communities have
been allowed to re-establish themselves against my instructions;--I am
informed that, at Beauvais, the Jesuits have formed establishments under
the name of the Fathers of Faith. It should not be allowed"--and he
prohibits it by decree.[5160] He dissolves "all associations formed
under the pretext of religion and unauthorized." He decides that, in
future, "no aggregation or association of men or of women shall be
formed under pretext of religion unless formally authorized;" he enjoins
the prosecuting attorneys of his courts "to prosecute even by extra
proceedings all persons of both sexes who directly or indirectly
violate this decree." He reserves to himself, however, the faculty
of authorizing communities by which he can profit, and, in fact, he
authorizes several of these as instruments which society needs, or
which are useful to the State, especially nursing or teaching sisters
of charity,[5161] the brethren of Christian schools,[5162] and, first
in rank, the Lazarists and the Fathers of foreign missions.[5163] "These
monks," he says,[5164] will be of great service in Asia, in Africa, and
in America. I will send them to procure information on the state of the
country. Their robe protects them, while it is a cover to political
and commercial designs.... I will allow them a capital to start with
of 15,000 francs rental.... They cost little, are respected by savages,
and, having no official character, can not compromise the government."
Moreover, "religious zeal leads them to undertake work and to face
perils which are beyond the strength of a civil agent."--Of course, as
they are "secret diplomatic agents," the government must keep them
in hand and direct them. Consequently, "their superior must no longer
reside in Rome, but at Paris." The same precaution is taken with
reference to other congregations, which, in teaching or in charity,
become regular auxiliaries of the lay power. "The general-superior of
the Sisters of Charity will live in Paris[5165]; the entire body will
then be in the hands of the government." As to the brethren of the
Christian schools, Napoleon absorbs these in his university.[5166] "They
must be licensed by the grand-master,[5167] who will certify to their
internal regulations, accept their oaths, prescribe a special costume,
and superintend their schools." Observe the exigencies of the government
at this point, its measures for controlling the religious orders
authorized by it. Abbé Hanon,[5168] the common superior of the Sisters
of Saint-Vincent de Paul, having refused to place Madame Lætitia
(Napoleon's mother) at the head of the council of the order, is carried
off at night and shut up at Fenestrelles,[5169] while the Sisters,
who, following the instructions of their founder, refuse to recognize a
superior appointed by the civil power, are treated in the same manner as
formerly the nuns of Port-Royal.[5170]

"It is time to put an end to this scandal of the Sisters of Charity in
rebellion against their superiors. It is my intention to suppress all
the houses which, in twenty-four hours after the notice you give them,
do not return to subordination. You will replace the houses suppressed,
not by Sisters of the same order, but by those of another order of
charity. The Sisters at Paris will lose their influence, which will be a
good thing."

Whatever the communities may be, the authorization by which they
organize is merely a favor, and every favor granted may be withdrawn.

"I will have no more missions of any kind.[5171] I established
missionaries in Paris and gave them a house: I cancel it all. I am
content with religion at home; I do not care to spread it abroad... . I
make you responsible if (in a month from this) on the first of October
there are any missions or congregations still existing in France."--

Thus does the regular clergy live, under a revocable title, by
toleration, despotically, suspended by a thread which, perhaps to-
morrow, may be cut at the masters pleasure.




VII. System to which the regular clergy is subject.

     System to which the regular clergy is subject.--Restoration
     and application of Gallican doctrines.--Gallicanism and
     submission of the new ecclesiastical staff.--Measures taken
     to insure the obedience of the existing clergy and that of
     the clergy in the future.--Seminaries.--Small number of
     these allowed.--Conditions granted to them.--Proceedings
     against suspicious teachers and undisciplined pupils.

The secular clergy remains, better protected, it seems, and by a less
precarious statute, for this statute is an international and diplomatic
act, a solemn and bilateral treaty which binds the French government,
not only to itself but to another government, to an independent
sovereign and the recognized head of the whole Catholic
Church.--Consequently, it is of prime importance to rebuild and raise
higher the barriers which, in ancient France, separated the secular
clergy from the Pope, the customs and regulations which constituted
the Gallican Church a province apart in the Church universal, the
ecclesiastic franchises and servitudes which restricted the Pope's
jurisdiction in order that the jurisdiction of the king might be
extended. All these servitudes to the advantage of the lay sovereign,
and all these franchises to the prejudice of the ecclesiastic sovereign,
are maintained and increased by the new statute. By virtue of the
Concordat and by consent of the Pope, the First Consul acquires the
same rights and privileges in relation to the Holy See as the old
government,"[5172] that is to say the same exclusive right to nominate
future French cardinals and to have as many as before in the sacred
college, the same right to exclude in the sacred conclave, the same
faculty of being the unique dispenser in France of high ecclesiastical
places and the prerogative of appointing all the bishops and archbishops
on French territory. And better still, by virtue of the Organic Articles
and in spite of the Pope's remonstrances, he interposes, as with the
former kings, his authority, his Council of State and his tribunals
between the Holy See and the faithful. "No bull, brief, rescript,
decree... of the court of Rome, even when bearing only on individuals,
shall be received, published, printed or otherwise executed without
permission of the government. No person, bearing the title of apostolic
nuncio, legate, vicar or commissioner, ... shall, without the same
authorization, exercise on the French soil or elsewhere any function
in relation to the interests of the Gallican Church.... All cases of
complaint by ecclesiastical superiors and other persons shall be brought
before the Council of State."[5173] Every minister of a cult[5174] who
shall have carried on a correspondence with a foreign court on religious
matters or questions without having previously informed the Minister of
Worship and obtained his sanction shall, for this act alone, be subject
to a penalty of from one hundred to five hundred francs and imprisonment
during a term of from one month to two years. Every communication from
high to low and from low to high between the French Church and its Roman
head, cut off at will, intervention by a veto or by approval of all
acts of pontifical authority, to be the legal and recognized head of
the national clergy,[5175] to become for this clergy an assistant,
collateral, and lay Pope--such was the pretension of the old government,
and such, in effect, is the sense, the juridical bearing, of the
Gallican maxims.[5176] Napoleon pro-claims them anew, while the edict
of 1682, by which Louis XIV. applied them with precision, rigor and
minuteness, "is declared the general law of the empire."[5177]

There are no opponents to this doctrine, or this use of it, in France.
Napoleon counts on not encountering any, and especially among his
prelates. Gallican before 1789, the whole clergy were more or less so
through education and tradition, through interest and through pride;
now, the survivors of this clergy are those who provide the new
ecclesiastical staff, and, of the two distinct groups from which it
is recruited, neither is predisposed by its antecedents to become
ultramontane. Some among these, who have emigrated, partisans of the
ancient régime, find no difficulty in thus returning to old habits and
doctrines, the authoritative protectorate of the State over the Church,
the interference of the Emperor substituted for that of the King, and
Napoleon, in this as in other respects, the legitimate, or legitimated,
successor of the Bourbons. The others, who have sworn to the civil
constitution of the clergy, the schismatics, the impenitent and, in
spite of the Pope, reintegrated by the First Consul in the Church,[5178]
are ill-disposed towards the Pope, their principal adversary, and
well-disposed towards the First Consul, their unique patron. Hence,
"the heads[5179] of the Catholic clergy, that is to say, the bishops and
grand-vicars,... are attached to the government;" they are "enlightened"
people, and can be made to listen to reason.

"But we have three or four thousand curés or vicars, the progeny of
ignorance and dangerous through their fanaticism and their passions."

If these and their superiors show any undisciplined tendencies, the
curb must be tightly drawn. Fournier, a priest, having reflected on the
government from his pulpit in Saint-Roch, is arrested by the police,
put in Bicêtre as mad,[5180] and the First Consul replies to the Paris
clergy who claim his release "in a well-drawn-up petition,":

"I wanted[5181] to prove to you, when I put my cap on the wrong side
out, that priests must obey the civil power."

Now and then, a rude stroke of this sort sets an example and keeps the
intractable on the right path who would otherwise be tempted to leave
it. At Bayonne, concerning a clerical epistle in which an ill-sounding
phrase occurs, "the grand-vicar who drew it up is sent to Pignerol for
ten years, and I think that the bishop is exiled."[5182]

At Séez, when constitutional priests are in disfavor, the bishop is
compelled to resign on the instant, while Abbé Langlois, his principal
counsellor, taken by the gendarmes, led to Paris from police station
to police station, is shut up in La Force, in secret confinement, with
straw for a bed, during fourteen days, then imprisoned in Vincennes for
nine months, so that, finally, seized with paralysis, he is transferred
to an insane retreat, where he remains a prisoner up to the end of the
reign.

Let us provide for the future as well as for the present, and, beyond
the present clergy, let us train the future clergy. The seminaries will
answer this purpose: "Public ones must be organized[5183] so that
there may be no clandestine seminaries, such as formerly existed in the
departments of Calvados, Morbihan and many others;... the formation of
young priests must not be left to ignorance and fanaticism."--"Catholic
schools need the surveillance of the government."--There is to be one of
these in each metropolitan district, and "this special school must be
in the hands of the authorities."--"The directors and teachers shall
be appointed by the First Consul"; men will be placed there who are
"cultivated, devoted to the government and friendly to toleration; they
will not confine themselves to teaching theology, but will add to this
a sort of philosophy and correct worldliness."--A future curé, a priest
who controls laymen and belongs to his century, must not be a monk
belonging to the other world, but a man of this world, able to adapt
himself to it, do his duty in it with propriety and discretion, accept
the legal establishment of which he is a part, not damn his Protestant
neighbors, Jews or freethinkers too openly, be a useful member of
temporal society and a loyal subject of the civil power; let him be
a Catholic and pious, but within just limits; he shall not be an
ultramontanist or a bigot.--Precautions are taken to this effect. No
seminarist may become subdeacon without the consent of the government,
and the list of ordinations each year, sent to him at Paris by the
bishop, is returned, cut down to the strictly necessary.[5184] From the
very beginning, and in express terms,[5185] Napoleon has reserved all
curacies and vicarages for "ecclesiastics pensioned by virtue of the
laws of the Constituent Assembly." Not only, through this confusion
between pension and salary, does he lighten a pecuniary burden, but
he greatly prefers old priests to young ones; many of them have been
constitutionnels, and all are imbued with Gallicanism; it is he who has
brought them back from exile or saved them from oppression, and they
are grateful for it; having suffered long and patiently, they are weary,
they must have grown wiser, and they will be manageable. Moreover,
he has precise information about each one; their past conduct is a
guarantee of their future conduct; he never chooses one of them with his
eyes shut. On the contrary, the candidates for ordination are strangers,
the government which accepts them knows nothing about them except that,
at the age when the fever of growth or of the imagination takes a fixed
form, they have been subject for five years to a theological education
and to a cloistral life. The chances are that, with them, the
feverishness of youth will end in the heat of conviction and in the
prejudices of inexperience; in this event, the government which exempts
them from the conscription to admit them in the Church exchanges a good
military recruit for a bad ecclesiastical recruit; in place of a servant
it creates an opponent. Hence, during the fifteen years of his reign,
Napoleon authorizes only six thousand new ordinations,[5186] in all
four hundred per annum, one hundred for each diocese or six or seven per
annum. Meanwhile, by his university decrees, he lets lay daylight into
clerical enclosures[5187] and shuts the door of all ecclesiastical
dignities to suspicious priests.[5188] For more security, in every
diocese in which "the principles of the bishop" do not give him full
satisfaction, he prohibits all ordination, nomination, promotion, or
favor whatever. "I have stricken off[5189] all demands relating to the
bishoprics of Saint-Brieuc, Bordeaux, Ghent, Tournay, Troyes and the
Maritime Alps.... My intention is that you do not, for these dioceses,
propose to me any exemption of service for conscripts, no nominations
for scholarships, for curacies, or for canonries. You will send in a
report on the dioceses which it would be well to strike with this ban."
Towards the end, the Gallicism of Bossuet no longer suffices for him; he
allowed it to be taught at Saint-Sulpice, and M. Emery, director of this
institution, was the priest in France whom he esteemed the most and
most willingly consulted; but a pupil's imprudent letter had been just
intercepted, and, accordingly, the spirit of that association is a
bad one. An order of expulsion of the director is issued and the
installation in his place of a new one "day after to-morrow," as well as
new administrators of whom none shall be Sulpician.[5190] "Take measures
to have this congregation dissolved. I will have no Sulpicians in the
seminary of Paris.[5191] Let me know the seminaries that are served
by Sulpicians in order that they too may be sent away from these
seminaries."[5192]--And let the seminarists who have been badly taught
by their masters take heed not to practice in their own behalf the
false doctrines which the State proscribes; especially, let them
never undertake, as they do in Belgium, to disobey the civil power in
deference to the Pope and their bishop. At Tournay,[5193] all those over
eighteen years of age are sent to Magdebourg; at Ghent, the very young
or those not fit for military service are put in Saint-Pelagie; the
rest, two hundred and thirty-six in number, including forty deacons or
sub-deacons, incorporated in an artillery brigade, set out for Wesel, a
country of marshes and fevers, where fifty of them soon die of epidemics
and contagion.--There is ever the same terminal procedure; to Abbé
d'Astros, suspected of having received and kept a letter of the Pope,
Napoleon, with threats, gave him this ecclesiastical watchword:

"I have heard that the liberties of the Gallican Church are being
taught: but for all that, I wear the sword, so watch out!"

So behind all his institutions one discovers the military sanction, the
arbitrary punishment, physical constraint, the sword ready to strike;
involuntarily, the eyes anticipates the flash of the blade, and the
flesh is feels in advance the rigid incision of the steel.




VIII. Administrative Control.

     Changes in the ecclesiastical hierarchy.--Motives for
     subordinating the lesser clergy.--The displacement of
     assistant priests.--Increase of episcopal authority.--Hold
     of Napoleon over the bishops.

Thus is a conquered country treated. He is, in relation to the Church,
as in a conquered country.[5194] Like Westphalia or Holland, she is a
naturally independent country which he has annexed by treaty, which he
has been able to include but not absorb in his empire, and which remains
invincibly distinct. The temporal sovereign, in a spiritual society,
especially such a sovereign as he is,--nominally Catholic, scarcely
Christian, at best a deist and from time to time as it suits,--will
never be other than an external suzerain and a foreign prince. To become
and remain master in such an annexed country it is always advisable
to exhibit the sword. Nevertheless, it would not be wise to strike
incessantly; the blade, used too often, would wear out; it is better to
utilize the constitution of the annex, rule over it indirectly, not by
an administrative bureau (régie), but by a protectorate, in which all
indigenous authorities can be employed and be made responsible for the
necessary rigors. Now, by virtue of the indigenous constitution, the
governors of the Catholic annex--all designated beforehand by their
suitable and indelible character, all tonsured, robed in black,
celibates and speaking Latin--form two orders, unequal in dignity and
in number; one inferior, comprising myriads of curés and vicars, and the
other superior, comprising some dozens of prelates.

Let us turn this ready-made hierarchy to account; and, the better to use
it, let us tighten the strings. In agreement with the upper clergy and
the Pope, we will increase the subjection of the lower clergy; we will
govern the inferiors through the superiors; whoever has the head has
the body; it is much easier to handle sixty bishops and archbishops
than forty thousand vicars and curés; in this particular we need
not undertake to restore primitive discipline; we must not be either
antiquaries or Gallicans. Let us be careful not to give back to the
second-class clergy the independence and stability they enjoyed before
1789, the canonical guarantees which protected them against episcopal
despotism, the institution of competition, the rights conferred by
theological grades, the bestowal of the best places on the wisest, the
appeal to the diocesan court in case of disgrace, the opposing plea
before the officialité, the permanent tie by which the titular curé,
once planted in his parish, took root there for life, and believed
himself bound to his local community like Jesus Christ to the universal
Church, indissolubly, through a sort of mystic marriage. "The number of
curés," says Napoleon,[5195] "must be reduced as much as possible, and
the number of assistants (desservans) multiplied who can be changed at
will," not only transferable to another parish, but revocable from day
to day, without formalities or delay, without appeal or pleading in any
court whatsoever. Henceforth, the sole irremovable curés are the four
thousand; the rest, under the name of succursalists, numbering
thirty thousand,[5196] are ecclesiastical clerks, surrendered to the
discretionary power of the bishop. The bishop alone appoints, places and
displaces all belonging to his diocese at his pleasure, and with a nod,
he transfers the most competent from the best to the worst post, from
the large borough or small town, where he was born and has lived at ease
near his family, to some wretched parish in this or that village buried
in the woods or lost on a mountain, without income or presbytery; and
still better, he cuts down his wages, he withdraws the State salary of
five hundred francs, he turns him out of the lodgings allowed him by
the commune, on foot on the highway, with no viaticum, even temporary,
excluded from ecclesiastical ministries, without respect, demeaned, a
vagabond in the great lay world whose ways are unknown to him and whose
careers are closed to him. Henceforth, and forever, bread is taken out
of his mouth; if he has it to-day, it is lacking on the morrow. Now,
every three months, the list of succursalists at five hundred francs
drawn up by the bishop, must be countersigned by the prefect. In his
upper cabinet, near the mantelpiece on which the visiting-cards of
every considerable personage in the department are displayed, facing the
emperor's bust, the two delegates of the emperor, his two responsible
and judicial managers, the two superintended overseers of the
conscription, confer together on the ecclesiastical staff of the
department. In this as in other matters, they are and feel themselves
kept in check from on high, curbed and forced, willingly or not, to
come to some agreement. Compulsory collaborators by institution, each
an auxiliary of the other in the maintenance of public order, they
read over article by article the list of appointments of their common
subordinates; should any name have bad notes, should any succursalist
be marked as noisy, undesirable, or suspect, should there be any
unfavorable report by the mayor, gendarmerie or upper police, the
prefect, about to sign, lays down his pen, quotes his instructions and
demands of the bishop against the delinquent some repressive measure,
either destitution, suspension or displacement, removal to an inferior
parish, or, at least, a comminatory reprimand, while the bishop, whom
the prefect may denounce to the minister, does not refuse to the prefect
this act of complacency.

Some months after the publication of the Concordat,[5197] Mademoiselle
Chameron, an opera-dancer, dies, and her friends bear her remains to the
church of Saint-Roch for internment. They are refused admittance, and
the curé, very rigid, "in a fit of ill-humor," orders the doors of the
church to be shut; a crowd gathers around, shouts and launches threats
at the curé; an actor makes a speech to appease the tumult, and finally
the coffin is borne off to the church of Les Filles-Saint-Thomas, where
the assistant priest, "familiar with the moral of the gospel," performs
the funeral service. Incidents of this kind disturb the tranquility
of the streets and denote a relaxation of administrative discipline.
Consequently the government, doctor in theology and canon law,
intervenes and calls the ecclesiastical superior to account. The first
Consul, in an article in the Moniteur, haughtily gives the clergy their
instructions and explains the course that will be pursued against them
by his prelates. "The Archbishop of Paris orders the curé of Saint-Roch
into retirement for three months, in order that he may bear in mind the
injunction of Jesus Christ to pray for one's enemies, and, made sensible
of his duties by meditation, may become aware that these superstitious
customs..., which degrade religion by their absurdities, have been done
away with by the Concordat and the law of Germinal 18." From now on
all priests and curés are prudent, circumspect, obedient, and
reserved,[5198] because their spiritual superiors are so as well,
and could not be otherwise. Each prelate, posted in his diocese, is
maintained there in isolation; a watch is kept on his correspondence; he
may communicate with the Pope only through the Minister of Worship;
he has no right to act in concert with his colleagues; all the general
assemblies of the clergy, all metropolitan councils, all annual synods
are suppressed. The Church of France has ceased to exist as one corps,
while its members, carefully detached from each other and from their
Roman head, are no longer united, but juxtaposed. Confined to a
circumscription, like the prefect, the bishop himself is simply an
ecclesiastical prefect, a little less uncertain of his tenure of office;
undoubtedly, his removal will not be effected by order, but he can be
forced to send in his resignation. Thus, in his case, as well as for the
prefect, his first care will be not to excite displeasure, and the next
one, to please. To stand well at court, with the minister and with the
sovereign, is a positive command, not only on personal grounds, but for
the sake of Catholic interests. To obtain scholarships for the pupils of
his seminary,[5199] to appoint the teachers and the director that
suits him, to insure the acceptance of his canons, cantonal curés, and
candidates for the priesthood, to exempt his sub-deacons from military
service, to establish and to defray the expenses of the chapels of his
diocese, to provide parishes with the indispensable priest, with regular
services and the sacraments, requires favors, which favors cannot be
enjoyed without an affectation of obedience and zeal and, more important
still, devotion. Moreover, he is only a human being. If Napoleon has
selected him, it is on account of his intelligence, knowing what he is
about, open to human motives, not too rigid and of too easy conscience;
in the eyes of the master, the first quality is an obedient personality
attached to his system and person.[51100] Moreover, with his candidates,
he has always taken into consideration the hold they give him through
their weaknesses, vanity and needs, their ostentatious ways and
expenditure, their love of money, titles and precedence, their ambition,
desire for promotion, enjoyment of credit, and right of obtaining places
for protégés and relations. He avails himself of all these advantages
and finds that they answer his purpose. With the exception of three or
four saints, like Monsignor d'Aviau[51101] or Monsignor Dessolles, who
he has inadvertently put into the episcopate, the bishops are content to
be barons, and the archbishops counts. They are glad to rank higher and
higher in the Legion of Honor; they loudly assert, in praise of the new
order of things, the honors and dignities it confers on these or those
prelates who have become members of the legislative corps or been made
senators.[51102] Many of them receive secret pay for secret services,
pecuniary incentives in the shape of this or that amount in ready money.
In sum, Napoleon has judged accurately; with hesitation and remorse,
nearly the whole of his episcopal staff, Italian and French, 66 prelates
out of 80, are open to "temporal influences". They yield to seductions
and threats; they accept or submit, even in spiritual matters, to his
positive ascendancy.[51103]

Moreover, among these dignitaries, nearly all of whom are blameless, or,
at least, who behave well and are generally honorable, Napoleon[51104]
finds a few whose servility is perfect, unscrupulous individuals ready
for anything that an absolute prince could desire, like Bishops Bernier
and De Pancemont, one accepting a reward of 30,000 francs and the other
the sum of 50,000 francs[51105] for the vile part they have played in
the negotiations for the Concordat; a miserly, brutal cynic like Maury,
archbishop of Paris, or an intriguing, mercenary skeptic like De Pradt,
archbishop of Malines; or an old imbecile, falling on his knees before
the civil power, like Rousseau, bishop of Orleans, who writes a pastoral
letter declaring that the Pope is as free in his Savona prison as on his
throne at Rome. After 1806,[51106] Napoleon, that he may control men
of greater suppleness, prefers to take his prelates from old noble
families--the frequenters of Versailles, who regard the episcopate as
a gift bestowed by the prince and not by the Pope, a lay favor reserved
for younger sons, a present made by the sovereign to those around his
person, on the understood condition that the partisan courtier who is
promoted shall remain a courtier of the master. Henceforth nearly
all his episcopal recruits are derived from "members of the old noble
stock." "Only these," says Napoleon, "know how to serve well."




IX. The Imperial Catechism

     Political use of the episcopacy.--The imperial catechism.
     --Pastoral letters.

From the first year the effect arrived at is better than could be
expected. "Look at the clergy,"[51107] said the First Consul to
Roederer; "every day shows that in spite of themselves their devotion to
the government is increasing, and much beyond their anticipation. Have
you seen the pastoral declaration of Boisgelin, archbishop of Tours?...
He says that the actual government is the legitimate government, that
God disposes of thrones and kings as he pleases and that he adopts the
chiefs whom the people prefer. Your yourself could not have said that
better." But notwithstanding that this is said in the pastoral letter,
it is again said in the catechism. No ecclesiastical publication is more
important: all Catholic children are to learn this by heart, for the
phrases they recite will be firmly fixed in their memories. Bossuet's
catechism is good enough, but it may be improved,--there is nothing
that time, reflection, emulation, and administrative zeal cannot render
perfect! Bossuet teaches children "to respect all superiors, pastors,
kings, magistrates, and the rest." "But these generalities," says
Portalis,[51108] "no longer suffice. They do not give the proper
tendency to the subject's submission. The object is to center the
popular conscience on the person of Your Majesty." Accordingly, let us
be precise, make appointments and secure support.

The imperial catechism, a great deal more explicit than the royal
catechism, adds significant development to the old one, along with extra
motives:

"We specially owe to our Emperor, Napoleon the First, love, respect,
obedience, fidelity, military service, and tributes ordained for the
preservation of the empire and his throne... For God has raised him up
for us in times of peril that he might restore public worship and the
holy religion of our fathers and be its protector."

Every boy and girl in each parish recite this to the vicar or curé after
vespers in their tiny voices as a commandment of God and of the Church,
as a supplementary article of the creed. Meanwhile the officiating
priest in the pulpit gravely comments on this article, already clear
enough, at every morning or evening service;[51109] by order, he
preaches in behalf of the conscription and declares that it is a sin to
try to escape from it, to be refractory; by order, again, he reads the
army bulletins giving accounts of the latest victories; always by order,
he reads the last pastoral letter of his bishop, a document authorized,
inspired and corrected by the police. Not only are the bishops obliged
to submit their pastoral letters and public instructions to the
censorship; not only by way of precaution, are they forbidden to print
anything except on the prefecture presses, but again, for still greater
security, the bureau of public worship is constantly advising them what
they must say. First and foremost, they must laud the Emperor. But in
what terms, and with what epithets, without indiscretion or mistake, in
order not to meddle with politics, not to appear as a party managed from
above, not to pass for megaphones, is not explained, and is therefore
a difficult matter. "You must praise the Emperor more in your pastoral
letters," said Réal, prefect of police, to a new bishop. "Tell me in
what measure." "I do not know," was the reply. Since the measure cannot
be prescribed, it must be ample enough. There is no difficulty as
regards other articles.--On every occasion the Paris offices take
care to furnish each bishop with a ready-made draft of his forthcoming
pastoral letter--the canvas on which the customary flowers of
ecclesiastical amplification are to be embroidered. It differs according
to time and place. In La Vendée and in the west, the prelates are to
stigmatize "the odious machinations of perfidious Albion," and explain
to the faithful the persecutions to which the English subject the Irish
Catholics. When Russia is the enemy, the pastoral letter must dwell
on her being schismatic; also on the Russian misunderstanding of the
supremacy of the Pope. Inasmuch as bishops are functionaries of
the empire, their utterances and their acts belong to the Emperor.
Consequently he makes use of them against all enemies, against each
rival, rebel or adversary, against the Bourbons, against the English and
the Russians, and, finally, against the Pope.




X. The Council of 1811.--The Concordat of 1813.

Similar to the Russian expedition, this is the great and last throw
of the dice, the decisive and most important of his ecclesiastical
undertakings, as the other is in political and military affairs. Just
as, under his leadership, he forces by constraint and, under his lead, a
coalition of the political and military powers of his Europe against
the Czar,--Austria, Prussia, the Confederation of the Rhine, Holland,
Switzerland, the kingdom of Italy, Naples, and even Spain,--so does he
by constraint and under his lead coalesce all the spiritual authorities
of his empire against the Pope. He summons a council, consisting of
eighty-four bishops that are available in Italy and in France. He takes
it upon himself to drill them, and he makes them march. To state what
influences he uses would require a volume[51110]--theological and
canonical arguments, appeals to Gallican souvenirs and Jansenist
rancors, eloquence and sophisms, preparatory maneuvers, secret
intrigues, public acting, private solicitations, steady intimidation,
successful pressures, thirteen cardinals exiled and deprived of their
insignia, two other cardinals confined in Vincennes, nineteen Italian
bishops conveyed to France under escort, without bread or clothes. Fifty
priests of Parma, fifty of Plaisance, besides one hundred other Italian
priests, sent away or confined in Corsica. All congregations
of men in France--Saint-Lazare, Mission, Christian Doctrine,
Saint-Sulpice--dissolved and suppressed. Three bishops of the
council seized in bed at daylight, put into a cell and kept in close
confinement, forced to resign and to promise in writing not to carry on
correspondence with their dioceses; arrest of their adherents in their
dioceses; the Ghent seminarists turned into soldiers, and, with knapsack
on their backs, leaving for the army; professors at Ghent, the canons of
Tournay, and other Belgian priests shut up in the citadels of Bouillon,
Ham and Pierre-Chatel.[51111] Near the end, the council suddenly
dissolved because scruples arise, because it does not yield at once to
the pressure brought to bear on it, because its mass constitutes its
firmness, because men standing close together, side by side, stand all
the longer. "Our wine in the cask is not good," said Cardinal Maury;
"you will find that it will be better in bottles." Accordingly, to make
it ready for bottling, it must be filtered and clarified, so as to get
rid of the bad elements which disturb it and cause fermentation. Many
Opponents are in prison, many have retired from their dioceses, while
the rest are brought to Paris and cunningly worked upon, each member
in turn, apart and confined, téte-à-téte with the Minister of Worship,
until all, one by one, are brought to sign the formula of adhesion.
On the strength of this, the council, purged and prepared, is summoned
afresh to give its vote sitting or standing, in one unique session;
through a remnant of virtue it inserts a suspensive clause in the
decree, apparently a reservation,[51112] but the decree is passed as
ordered. Like the foreign regiment in an army corps which, enlisted,
forced into line, and goaded on with a sharp sword, serves, in spite of
itself, against its legitimate prince, unwilling to march forward to
the attack, meaning at the last moment to fire in the air, so does it
finally march and fire its volley notwithstanding.

Napoleon, on the other hand, treats the Pope in the same fashion, and
with like skill and brutality. As with the Russian campaign, he has
prepared himself for it long beforehand. At the outset there is an
alliance, and he concedes great advantages to the Pope as to the Czar,
which will remain to them after his fall; but these concessions are
made only with a mental reservation, with the instinctive feeling
and predetermination to profit by the alliance, even to making an
independent sovereign whom he recognizes as his equal, his subordinate
and a tool; hence, quarrels and war. This time also, in the expedition
against the Pope, his strategy is admirable,--the entire ecclesiastical
territory studied beforehand, the objective point selected,[51113] all
disposable forces employed and directed by fixed marches to where the
victory is to be decisive, the conquest extended and the seat of the
final dominion established; the successive and simultaneous use of every
kind of means--cunning, violence, seduction and terror. Calculation of
the weariness, anxiety and despair of the adversary; at first menaces
and constant disputes, and then flashes of lightning and multiplied
claps of thunder, every species of brutality that force can command;
the States of the Church invaded in times of peace, Rome surprised and
occupied by soldiers, the Pope besieged in the Quirinal, in a year the
Quirinal taken by a nocturnal assault, the Pope seized and carried off
by post to Savona and there confined as a prisoner of state almost in
cellular seclusion,[51114] subject to the entreaties and manoeuvres of
an adroit prefect who works upon him, of the physician who is a paid
spy, of the servile bishops who are sent thither, alone with his
con-science, contending with inquisitors relieving each other, subject
to moral tortures as subtile and as keen as old-time physical tortures,
to tortures so steady and persistent that he sinks, loses his head, "no
longer sleeps and scarcely speaks," falling into a senile condition and
even more than senile condition, "a state of mental alienation."[51115]
Then, on issuing from this, the poor old man is again beset; finally,
after waiting patiently for three years, he is once more brusquely
conducted at night, secretly and incognito, over the entire road, with
no repose or pity though ill, except stopping once in a snow-storm at
the hospice on Mount Cenis, where he comes near dying; put back after
twenty-four hours in his carriage, bent double by suffering and in
constant pain; jolting over the pavement of the grand highway until
almost dead and landed at Fontainebleau, where Napoleon wishes to have
him ready at hand to work upon. "Indeed," he himself says, "he is
a lamb, an excellent, worthy man whom I esteem and am very fond
of."[51116]

An improvised tête-a-tête may probably prove effective with this gentle,
candid and tender spirit. Pius VII., who had never known ill-will,
might be won by kindly treatment, by an air of filial respect, by
caresses; he may feel the personal ascendency of Napoleon, the
prestige of his presence and conversation, the invasion of his genius.
Inexhaustible in arguments, matchless in the adaptation of ideas to
circumstances, the most amiable and most imperious of interlocutors,
stentorian and mild, tragic and comic by turns, the most eloquent of
sophists and the most irresistible of fascinators, as soon as he meets
a man face to face, he wins him, conquers him, and obtains the
mastery.[51117] In effect, after seeing the Pope for six days, Napoleon
obtains by persuasion what he could not obtain afar by constraint. Pius
VII. signs the new Concordat in good faith, himself unaware that, on
regaining his freedom and surrounded by his cardinals, who inform him
on the political situation, he will emerge from his bewilderment, be
attacked by his conscience, and, through his office, publicly accuse
himself, humbly repent, and in two months withdraw his signature.

Such, after 1812 and 1813, is the duration of Napoleon's triumphs
and the ephemeral result of his greatest military and ecclesiastical
achievements--Moskow, Lutzen, Bautzen and Dresden, the Council of 1811
and the Concordat of 1813. Whatever the vastness of his genius may be,
however strong his will, however successful his attacks, his success
against nations and churches never is, and never can be, other than
temporary. Great historical and moral forces elude his grasp. In vain
does he strike, for their downfall gives them new life, and they rise
beneath the blow. With Catholic institutions,[51118] as with other
powers, not only do his efforts remain sterile, but what he accomplishes
remains inverse to the end he has in view. He aims to subjugate the
Pope, and he led the Pope on to omnipotence He aims at the maintenance
and strength of the Gallican spirit among the French clergy, and yet
brings them under the rule of the ultramontane spirit.[51119] With
extraordinary energy and tenacity, with all his power, which was
enormous, through the systematic and constant application of diverse and
extreme measures, he labored for fifteen years to rend the ties of the
Catholic hierarchy, take it to pieces, and, in sum, the final result of
all is to tie them faster and hasten its completion.


*****


[Footnote 5101: Se preface to "The Modern Régime," Vol. I.]

[Footnote 5102: On some of the ideas above indicated see "The Modern
Régime," Vol. I. p.120.]

[Footnote 5103: An allusion to Malthusianism, practiced by many heads
of families in France. M. Taine would probably have shown this practice
contrary to national welfare.--Tr.]

[Footnote 5104: Idolizing of children. (SR.)]

[Footnote 5105: Cf. "Les carnets de voyage."]

[Footnote 5106: On this idea see Volume I of "The Modern Régime," page
332, to the end of the chapter. (Ed. Laff. II. pp. 592 to 605).]

[Footnote 5107: Today this would probably be the media especially
television.]

[Footnote 5108: Memorial, IV.,259 (June 7 and 8, 1816); V., 323 (Aug.
17, 1816).]

[Footnote 5109: Thibaudeau, p. 152 (Prairial 21, year X.]

[Footnote 5110: Idem, IV.,259, (June 7 and 8, 1816).--Pelet de la
Lozere, "Opinions de Napoléon au conseil d'état," p 223, (March 4,
1806).]

[Footnote 5111: "Discours, rapports et travaux sur le Concordat de
1801," by Portalis (published by Fréderick Portalis), p.10.--In his
speech on the organization of cults (Germinal 15, year X), Portalis,
although a good Catholic, adopts the same idea, because he is a legist
and one of the ancient Régime. "Religions, even false, have this
advantage, that they are an obstacle to the introduction of arbitrary
doctrines. Individuals have a center of faith; governments have no fear
of dogmas once known and which do not change. Superstition, so to say,
is regulated, circumscribed and kept within bounds which it cannot, or
dare not, go outside of."]

[Footnote 5112: Thibaudeau, p. 151 (Prairial 21, year X). "The First
Consul combated at length the different systems of the philosophy on
cults, natural religions, deism, etc. All that according to him, was
mere ideology."]

[Footnote 5113: Pelet de la Lozère, p. 208 (May 22, 1804).]

[Footnote 5114: Thibaudeau, p. 152 (Prairial 21, year X).]

[Footnote 5115: Pelet de la Lozère, p, 223 (March 4, 1806).]

[Footnote 5116: Roederer, "Oevres complètes," III., 334 (Aug. 18,
1800).]

[Footnote 5117: What impression could this have made on Lenin? Could he
not have felt: "Perhaps Napoleon's logic was good at that time but now
with electricity, the steam engine and modern industrialism it will be
possible to do without the efficiency of capitalism and hence with its
inequalities and egoism? If so then we can recreate the equality
dreamt of by Babeuf, Robespierre, Saint Just and the other ancient
revolutionaries!!"]

[Footnote 5118: Ref.: "Where some people are very wealthy and others
have nothing, the result will either be extreme democracy or absolute
oligarchy, and despotism will come from either of these excesses."
Aristotle. (SR.)]

[Footnote 5119: Pelet de la Lozère, p. 205 (February 11, 1804).]

[Footnote 5120: Ibid., p. 201.]

[Footnote 5121: Pelet de la Lozère, p. 206, (Feb. 11, 1804).]

[Footnote 5122: Mémorial, V., 323 (Aug. 17, 1816).]

[Footnote 5123: Pelet de la Lozère, p 201.]

[Footnote 5124: Mémorial, V., 353 (Aug. 17, 1816). Notes on "Les Quatre
Concordants," by M. de Pradt (Correspondence of Napoleon I., xxx.,
p.557).]

[Footnote 5125: Bourrienne, "Mémoires," V., 232.]

[Footnote 5126: Notes on "Les Quatre Concordats," by M. de Pradt
(Correspondence of Napoleon I., XXX., 638 and 639).]

[Footnote 5127: Thibaudeau, p. 152 (Prairial 21, year X).]

[Footnote 5128: Notes on "Les Quatre Concordats," by M. de Pradt
(correspondence, XXX., 638).]

[Footnote 5129: Count Boulay de La Meurthe, "Négotiations du concordat."
(Extract from the correspondant, "1882, on the religious state of
France in November, 1800, and particularly on, the condition of the
constitutional church, the latter being very poor, disunited, with no
credit and no future.) The writer estimates the number of active priests
at 8000, of which 2000 are constitutionnels and 6000 orthodox."]

[Footnote 5130: Thibaudeau, p.152.]

[Footnote 5131: Thibaudeau, p. 154 (words of the First consul) "What
makes the government liked is its respect for worship.... The priests
must be connected with the government."]

[Footnote 5132: Ibid., p.154: "Is it not better to organize worship and
discipline the priests rather than let things go on as they are?"]

[Footnote 5133: La Fayette, "Mémoires, II.", 200. ("Mes rapports avec le
Premier consul.")]

[Footnote 5134: D'Haussonville, "l'Église romaine et la Premier Empire,"
II.. 78 and 101. Napoleon's letters to Cardinal Fesch, Jan. 7, 1806;
to the Pope, Feb.22, 1806 and to cardinal Fesch, of the same date. "His
Holiness will have the same consideration for me in temporal matters
as I have for him in spiritual matters.... My enemies will be his
enemies."--"Tell people (in Rome) that I am Charlemagne, the sword of
the church, their emperor; that I must be treated the same; that they
should not know that there was a Russian empire.... If the Pope does
not accept my conditions, I shall reduce him to the condition he was in
before Charlemagne."]

[Footnote 5135: Decree, May 17, 1809. "Whereas, when Charlemagne,
emperor of the French, and out august predecessor, donated several
counties to the bishops of Rome, he gave them only under the title of
fiefs and for the welfare of his own states, and as by the said donation
Rome did not thereby cease to form part of his empire,... the states of
the Pope are now reunited to the French empire."]

[Footnote 5136: Sénatus-consulte, Feb. 17, 1810, title II., article
XII. "Any foreign sovereignty is incompatible with the exercise of any
spiritual sovereignty within the empire."]

[Footnote 5137: D'Haussonville, ibid., IV.,344. (Decree of the National
Council, Aug. 5, 1811.--Concordat of Fontainebleau, Jan. 25, 1813,
article 14.--Decree on the execution of this Concordat, March 23, 1813,
art. 4.)]

[Footnote 5138: Sénatus-consulte, Feb.17, 1810, articles 13 and 14.]

[Footnote 5139: Mémorial, Aug.17, 1816.]

[Footnote 5140: Sénatus-consulte, Feb.17, 1810.]

[Footnote 5141: Notes by Napoleon on the "Les Quatre Concordats de M. de
Pradt" (correspondence, XXX., 550). Lanfrey, "Histoire de Napoléon," V.,
214. (Along with the Vatican archives, there were brought to Paris the
tiara and other insignia or ornaments of Pontifical dignity.)]

[Footnote 5142: Sénatus-consulte, Feb. 17, 1810.]

[Footnote 5143: Notes by Napoleon on "Les Quatre Concordats"
(Correspondence, XXX., 548).]

[Footnote 5144: Cf. Roman laws on the Collegia illicita, the first
source of which is the Roman conception of religion, the political and
practical use of augurs, auspices and sacred fowls.--It is interesting
to trace the long life and survivorship of this important idea from
antiquity down to the present day; it reappears in the Concordat and
in the Organic Articles of 1801, and still later in the late decrees
dissolving unauthorized communities and closing the convents of men.--
French jurists, and in particular Napoleon's jurists, are profoundly
imbued with the Roman idea. Portalis, in his exposition of the motives
for establishing metropolitan seminaries (March 14, 1804), supports the
decree with Roman law. "The Roman laws," he says, "place every thing
concerning the cult in the class of matters which belong essentially to
public rights."]

[Footnote 5145: Thibaudeau, p.152.]

[Footnote 5146: "Discours, rapports et travaux sur le Concordat de
1801," by Portalis, p.87 (on the Organic Articles), p.29 (on the
organization of cults). "The ministers of religion must not pretend to
share in or limit public power.... Religious affairs have always been
classed by the different national codes among matters belonging to the
upper police department of the State... The political magistrate may and
should intervene in everything which concerns the outward administration
of sacred matters.... In France, the government has always presided,
in a more or less direct way, over the direction of ecclesiastical
affairs."]

[Footnote 5147: "Discours, rapports, etc.," by Portalis, p. 31.--Ibid.,
p.143: "To sum up: The Church possesses only a purely spiritual
authority; the sovereigns, in their capacity of political magistrates,
regulate temporal and mixed questions with entire independence, and, as
protectors, they have even the right to see to the execution of
canons and to repress, even in spiritual matters, the infractions of
pontiffs."]

[Footnote 5148: Articles Organiques. 1st. Catholic cult, articles 3, 4,
23, 24, 35, 39, 44, 62. 2nd. Protestant cults, articles 4, 5, 11, 14,
22, 26, 30, 31, 32, 37, 38, 39, 41, 42, 43.--Israelite cult, decree of
March 17, 1808, articles 4, 8, 9, 16, 23. Decree of execution, samedate,
articles 2 to 7.]

[Footnote 5149: Decree of March 17, 1808, articles 12, 21.]

[Footnote 5150: Articles Organiques (Protestant cults), 12 and 13.]

[Footnote 5151: Articles Organiques (Catholic cult), 24. Teachers
selected for the seminaries "will subscribe the declaration made by
the clergy of France in 1682; they will submit to teaching the doctrine
therein set forth."]

[Footnote 5152: "Dsicours, rapports, etc," by Portalis, p. 101.]

[Footnote 5153: Ibid, p. 378.]

[Footnote 5154: Abbé Sicard, "Les Dispensateurs des bénéfices
ecclésiastiques" (in the "Correspondant," Sep.10, 1889, p.883). A
benefice was then a sort of patrimony which the titulary, old or ill,
often handed over to one of his relatives. "A canonist of the eighteenth
century says that the resignation carried with it one third of the
income."]

[Footnote 5155: "Souvenirs", by Pasquier (Etienne-Dennis, duc), Librarie
Plon, Paris 1893. Vol. I. p. 415.: "The nomination of Cardinal Maury
as arch-bishop of Paris was published on the same day that I had been
appointed prefect of police. The new arch-bishop had made too much noise
in the past for him not to have become known to me. He was as happy with
his appointment as I was unhappy with mine. I met him in the chateau
Fontainebleau and I have ever since been haunted by the noisy expression
of his happiness. He constantly repeated this sentence: "The Emperor has
just satisfied the two greatest requirements of his capital. With a good
police and a good clergy he can always be sure of public order, since an
arch-bishop is also a prefect of the police."]

[Footnote 5156: Report of Siméon to the tribunat on presenting to it the
Concordat and Organic Articles, Germinal 17, year X.--Henceforth
"the ministers of all cults will be subject to the influence of the
government which appoints or confirms them, to which they are bound
by the most sacred promises, and which holds them in its dependence by
their salaries."]

[Footnote 5157: "Discours, rapports, etc.," by Portalis, p. 40.--Emile
Ollivier, "Nouveau manuel de droit ecclésiastique," P.193. (Reply by
Portalis to the protests of the Holy See, Sep. 22, 1803.) Before 1789
Portalis writes: "The spectacle presented by the monks was not very
edifying.. .. The legislature having decided that religious vows could
not be taken up to twenty-one years of age,... this measure keeps
novices away; the monastic orders, sapped by the state of morals and by
time, could obtain no recruits; they languished in a state of inertia
and of disfavor which was worse than annihilation.... The era for
monastic institutions had passed."]

[Footnote 5158: Pelet de la Lozère, p.146. (Words of Napoleon, March 11,
1806.)]

[Footnote 5159: Pelet de la Lozère, p.207 (May 22, 1804).]

[Footnote 5160: Decree of Messidor 3, year XII (June 22, 1804).--Letter
of Napoleon to the King of Naples, April 14, 1807, on the suppression
of convents at Naples: "You know that I don't like monks, as I have
uprooted them everywhere." To his sister Elisa, May 17, 1806: "Keep on
and suppress the convents."]

[Footnote 5161: "État des congrégations, communantés et associations
religieuses," drawn up in execution of article 12 of the law of Dec. 12,
1876 (Imprimerie nationale, 1878): 1st. congregations of women with a
general superior, nurses and teachers, authorized from Prairial 28, year
XI, to January 13, 1813, total, 42; 2nd. communities of women without a
general superior, nurses and teachers, authorized from April 9, 1806, to
Sept. 28, 1813, total, 205.]

[Footnote 5162: Ibid., Brethren of the Christian Schools, namely, of
Saint Yon, authorized March 17, 1808.]

[Footnote 5163: Ibid., congregation of the Mission of Saint-Lazare,
authorized Prairial 17, year XI.--Congregation of the Seminary of
Foreign Missions, authorized Germinal 2, year XIII.]

[Footnote 5164: Pelet de la Lozère, p.208 (May 22, 1804).]

[Footnote 5165: Pelet de la Lozère, P.209]

[Footnote 5166: Decree of March 17, 1808, article 109.]

[Footnote 5167: Alexis Chevalier, "Les Frères des écoles chrétiennes
après la Révolution," p. 93. (Report by Portalis approved by the First
consul, Frimaire to, year XII.) "Henceforth," says Portalis, "the
superior-general at Rome abandons all inspection of the Christian
Brothers. In France, it is understood that the Brothers will have a
superior general resident at Lyons."]

[Footnote 5168: D'Haussonville, V., p. 148.]

[Footnote 5169: Fortress in the Italian Alps. (SR.)]

[Footnote 5170: D'Haussonville, V., p. 148. Letter of Napoleon to
the Minister of Worship, March 3, 1811 (omitted in the published
correspondence).]

[Footnote 5171: Ibid., IV.,p.133. (Letter by Napoleon, Sep. 2, 1809,
omitted in the "Correspondence.")]

[Footnote 5172: Concordat, articles 4, 5, 16.]

[Footnote 5173: Articles Organiques, I., pp. 2, 6.]

[Footnote 5174: Code pénal, decree of Feb. 16-20, 1810, article 207.]

[Footnote 5175: Napoleon's own expressions: "I may regard myself as the
head of the Catholic ministry, since the Pope has crowned me." (Pelet
de la Lozère, p. 210, July 17, 1806.)--Note the word crowned (sacré).
Napoleon, as well as former kings, considers himself as clothed with
ecclesiastical dignity.]

[Footnote 5176: On the sense and bearing of Gallican maxims cf. the
whole of the answer by Portalis to Cardinal Caprara. (Émile Ollivier,
"Nouveau manuel de droit ecclésiastique," p.150.)]

[Footnote 5177: Decree of Feb.25, 1810. (The edict of Louis XIV. is
attached to it.) Prohibition to teach or write "anything opposed to
the doctrine contained" in the declaration of the French clergy. "Every
professor of theology must sign and submit to teaching the doctrine
therein set forth."--In establishments where there are several
professors "one of them will be annually directed to teach the said
doctrine."--In colleges where there is but one professor "he will be
obliged to teach it one of three consecutive years."--The professors are
required to hand in to the competent authority "their minutes dictated
to the pupils."--None of them can be "licensed, whether in theology or
in canon law, nor graduated as doctor, without having maintained the
said doctrine in one of his theses."]

[Footnote 5178: Cf., for details, d'Haussonville, I., p.200 et seq.]

[Footnote 5179: Pelet de la Lozère, p. 205. (Words of Napoleon, Feb. 4,
1804.)]

[Footnote 5180: A procedure used by Stalin and copied by all his
satellite states. (SR.)]

[Footnote 5181: Thibaudeau, p.157 (Messidor 2, year X).]

[Footnote 5182: Roederer, III., pp. 535, 567.]

[Footnote 5183: Pelet de la Lozère, p.203. (Napoleon's words, Feb. 4,
1804.)--Law of March 14, 1804.]

[Footnote 5184: Cf. "Letters of Mgr. Claude Simon, bishop of Grenoble,
April 18, 1809, and October 6, 1811."]

[Footnote 5185: Articles Organiques, p.68.]

[Footnote 5186: Bercastel and Henrion, "Histoire générale de l'Église,"
XIII., p.32. (Speech by M. Roux-Laborie, deputy in 1816.)--At the
present day, the ordinations oscillate between 1200 and 1700 per annum.]

[Footnote 5187: Decree of November 15, 1811, articles 28, 29, 32. "On
and after July 1, 1812, all secondary ecclesiastical schools (small
seminaries) which may not be situated in towns possessing a lycée or
college shall be closed. No secondary ecclesiastical school shall be
placed in the country. In all places where there are ecclesiastical
schools the pupils of these schools shall pursue their studies in the
lycée or college classes."]

[Footnote 5188: "Correspondence of Napoleon (notes for the Minister
of Worship), July 30, 1806." In order to be curé of the first class,
chanoin, vicar-general or bishop one must henceforth be bachelor,
licencié, doctor in the university grades, "which the university may
refuse in case the candidate shall be known to entertain ultramontane
ideas or ideas dangerous to authority."]

[Footnote 5189: D'Haussonville, V., p.144 et seq. (Letter of Napoleon to
the Minister of Worship, Oct.22, 1811, omitted in the "correspondence.")
The letter ends with these words: "This mode of working must be kept
secret."]

[Footnote 5190: "Histoire de M. Emery," by Abbé Elie Méric, II., p. 374.
The order of expulsion (June 13, 1810) ends with these words: "Immediate
possession is to be taken of the house which might belong to some
domain and which, at least in this case, could be considered as public
property, since it might belong to a congregation. If it is found to be
private property belonging to M. Emery or to any other person, the
rents might first be paid and then afterwards it might be required, save
indemnity, as useful for the public service." This shows in full the
administrative and fiscal spirit of the French State, its heavy hand
being always ready to fall imperiously on every private individual and
on all private property.]

[Footnote 5191: Letter of Napoleon, Oct. 8, 1811.]

[Footnote 5192: Ibid. Nov. 22, 1811.]

[Footnote 5193: D'Haussonville, V., p.282. (Letter of Napoleon, Aug.
14, 1813, omitted in the correspondence.)--"Mémoires" du Chancelier
Pasquier, II." pp. 88-91.]

[Footnote 5194: Roederer, III., p.430 (Germinal 19, year X): "The legate
was received today in the consular palace; in making his speech, he
trembled like a leaf."]

[Footnote 5195: Pelet de la Lozère, p.206 (May 22, 1804).]

[Footnote 5196: Decrees of May 31, 1804, Dec.26, 1804, and Sep.30. 1807,
with the list of succursals by departments.--Besides the succursalists
paid by the State, there were vicars not less dependent on the bishop
and maintained by allowances from the communes or by private donations.
(Bercastel et Henrion, XIII., p.32, speech by M. Roux-Laborie in the
chamber of Deputies, 1816.) "In his re-composition of the Church of
France the usurper established 12,000 vicars dependent on alms, and it
will not surprise you that, instead of 12,000, there were only 5000
who were courageous enough to die of starvation or implore public
charity.... Thus are 4000 country churches without worship or
minister."]

[Footnote 5197: Thibaudeau, p. 166, and article of Brumaire 30, in the
Moniteur.]

[Footnote 5198: Roederer, III., p. 479 et seq. (Report on the
Senatorerie of Caen.) The priests everywhere feel that they are watched
and set aside. "Most of those I encounter exclaim, Poor curé, an
unfortunate curé. The functionaries are devoted to the Emperor as
their sole support against the nobles, whom they dread, and against the
priests, whom they slightly esteem.... The military, the judges, the
administrators when alluding to the priests or to religion merely smile;
the priests, on the other hand, express very little confidence in the
functionaries."]

[Footnote 5199: Decree of Sept. 30, 1804 (with allotment of 800
scholarships and 1600 demi-scholarships to each diocesan seminary).
These will be allowed us on being presented by the bishops.]

[Footnote 51100: D'Haussonville, II., p. 227.]

[Footnote 51101: Idem. IV. Order of arrest of M. d'Avian, archbishop of
Bordeaux, as one of the opponents of the Council (July 11, 1811). Savary
himself, Minister of Justice, raises objections. "Sire, do nothing with
M. d'Avian. He is a saint and we shall have everybody against us."]

[Footnote 51102: Idem., IV. p. 58. Address of the ecclesiastical
commission enumerating the favors granted to religion, "the legion
of Honor, conferred on many prelates, the titles of baron and count
assigned to bishops and archbishops of the Empire, the admission of
several of these to the legislative assembly and senate."]

[Footnote 51103: D'Haussonville, IV.,p. 366. (Last session of the
national council, August 5, 1811.)]

[Footnote 51104: Reading this, as Lenin must have done, could he help
but dream of the day, when he could become head of a state, head of a
foreign service, of a secret police force and hence be able to subvert
the entire world including the religious organizations, the political
parties, diplomatic services not to speak of international organizations
in New York or Brussels. (SR.)]

[Footnote 51105: Idem., I., pp. 203-205.]

[Footnote 51106: Idem., p. 228. Cf. the "Almanach impérial de
1806-1814."--Lanfrey, "Histoire de Napoléon,"V., p. 208. The Prince de
Rohan, head chaplain, writes in a request he makes, The great Napoleon
is my tutelary divinity. On the margin of this request Napoleon attaches
the following decision: "The Duc de Frioul will pay to the head chaplain
12,000 francs,--tax on receipts of the theatres." (Feb. 15, 1810.)
Another example of the same type is M. Roquelaure, archbishop of
Malines, who addresses Josephine with a little ancient-régime speech,
at once episcopal and gallant. The First Consul, therefore, makes him
Member of the Institute. (Bourrienne, V., p. 130.) This archbishop, in
the administration of his diocese, zealously applies the policy of the
First Consul. "We have seen him suspend from his functions a priest who
had exhorted a dying man to restore ecclesiastical property which he had
taken." ("Dictionnaire biographique," published at Leipsic by Eymery,
1806, 1808.)]

[Footnote 51107: Roederer, III., p. 459 (December 30, 1802).]

[Footnote 51108: D'Haussonville, II., 257. (Report by Portalis to the
Emperor, Feb. 13, 1806.)--Idem., II., 226.]

[Footnote 51109: D'Haussonville, II., 237, 239, 272.--Pelet de la
Lozère, 201: "At other times Napoleon praised the priests, wanted
their services, largely attributing the departure of conscripts and the
submission of the people to their influence."--Idem, 173 (May 20, 1806,
words of Napoleon): "The Catholic priests behave very well and are of
great service. It is owing to them that the conscription this year has
been better than in former years... No branch of the State speaks so
well of the government."]

[Footnote 51110: D'Haussonville, III, IV.,and V., passim.]

[Footnote 51111: "Mémoires," by the Chancelier Pasquier, IV.,358.]

[Footnote 51112: D'Haussonville, IV.,366 (last phrase of the text): "A
deputation of six bishops will go and beg His Holiness to confirm this
decree."]

[Footnote 51113: To an ordinary reader, even Catholic, if not versed!in
canon law, Napoleon's exactions seem mediocre and even acceptable;
they reduce themselves down to fixing a delay and seeming to add to the
competency of councils and the authority of bishops. (D'Haussonville,
IV.,366, session of the council, Aug. 5, 1811, propositions adopted and
decree. Cf. the Concordat of Fontainebleau, Jan. 25, 1813, article 4.)]

[Footnote 51114: Comte D'Haussonville, IV.,121 and following pages.
(Letters of the prefect, M. de Chabrol, letters of Napoleon not inserted
in the "Correspondence," narration of Dr. Claraz.) 6000 francs, a
present to the bishop of Savona, 12,000 francs salary to Dr. Porta, the
Pope's physician. "Dr. Porta," writes the prefect, "seems disposed to
serve us indirectly with all his power.... Efforts are made to affect
the Pope either by all who approach him or by all the means in our
power."]

[Footnote 51115: Ibid. (Letters of M. de Chabrol, May 14 and 30, 1811.)
"The Pope has fallen into a state of stupor.... The physician fears a
case of hypochondria;... his health and reason are affected." Then, in a
few days: "The state of mental alienation has passed."]

[Footnote 51116: Mémorial (Aug.17, 1816).]

[Footnote 51117: D'Haussonville, V., 244. Later, the Pope keeps silent
about his interviews with Napoleon. "He simply lets it be understood
that the emperor spoke to him haughtily and contemptuously, even
treating him as an ignoramus in ecclesiastical matters."--Napoleon met
him with open arms and embraced him, calling him his father. (Thiers,
XV., 295.)--It is probable that the best literary portrayal of these
tête-à-tête conversations is the imaginary scene in "Grandeurs et
Servitudes Militaires," by Alfred de Vigny.]

[Footnote 51118: Comte Chaptal, "Notes": "No, in the course of
sixteen years of a stormy government, Bonaparte never met with so much
resistance and never suffered so many disappointments as were caused
by his quarrel with the Pope. There is no event in his life which more
alienated the people as his proceedings and conduct towards the Pope."]

[Footnote 51119: Ultramontanism; a set of doctrines establishing the
pope's absolute authority.]




CHAPTER II. THE CATHOLIC CHURCH.




I. The Catholic System.

     The effects of the system.--Completion of the ecclesiastical
     hierarchy.--Omnipotence of the Pope in the Church.
     --Influence of the French Concordat and other precedents from
     1801 to 1870.--Why the clergy becomes ultramontane.--The
     dogma of Infallibility.

In 1801, at Rome, pending the negotiations for the Concordat, when Pius
VII. still hesitated about the deposition in mass of the survivors of
the ancient French episcopacy, clear-sighted observers already remarked,
"Let this Concordat which the First Consul desires be completed,[5201]
and you will see, on its ratification, its immense importance and
the power it will give to Rome over the episcopacy throughout the
universe."--In effect, through this "extraordinary, nearly unexampled"
act of authority, and certainly unequaled "in the history of the
Church,"[5202] the ultramontane theory, contested up to this time,
maintained in the speculative region of abstract formulae, comes down
to solid ground, into practical and lasting use. Willingly or not, "the
Pope acts as if universal bishop;" urged and constrained by the lay
power, attached to a dictatorship,[5203] he entered upon it and so
installed himself, and, ten years later, Napoleon, who had impelled him
on, regretted that he had done so. Warned by his Gallican jurists,
he saw the ecclesiastical import of his work; but it was too late to
retreat--the decisive step had been taken.--For, in fact, the Pope had
deprived all the chieftains of a great church of their thrones, "his
colleagues and co-bishops,"[5204] successors of the apostles under the
same title as himself, members "of the same order and stamped "with the
same "character," eighty-five legitimate incumbents[5205] and, still
better, as admitted by himself, blameless, worthy, persecuted
because they had obeyed him, banished from France on account of their
unwillingness to quit the Roman Church. He had ordered them to resign;
he had withdrawn apostolic powers from the thirteen who had refused to
tender their resignations; to all, even to those who refused, he had
appointed their successors. He assigned to the new titularies dioceses
of a new pattern and, to justify novelties of such gravity,[5206] he
could allege no other reasons than circumstances, the exigencies of
lay power, and the welfare of the Church. After that the Gallicans
themselves, unless accepting the risk of a schism and of separating
forever from the Holy See, were obliged to allow the Pope above and
beyond the ordinary powers exercised by him within the old limits of
canons and of custom, an extraordinary power unlimited by any canon or
by any custom,[5207] a plenary and absolute authority, a right above
all other rights, by virtue of which, in cases determined by himself, he
provided in a discretionary way for all Catholic interests, of which he
thus becomes the supreme judge, the sole interpreter and the court of
last appeal. An indestructible precedent was set up; it was the great
corner-stone in the support of the modern Church edifice; on this
definitive foundation all other stones were to be superposed, one by
one. In 1801, Pius VII., under the pressure of the reigning Napoleon,
had obliged the prelates of the old régime, sullied by a monarchical
origin and suspected of zeal for the dethroned Bourbons, to abandon
their seats. In 1816, under the pressure of the re-established Bourbons,
the same Pius VII. obliged Fesch, cardinal-archbishop of Lyons, and
uncle of the fallen Napoleon, to abandon his seat. Bercastel et Henrion,
XIII, 192. Cardinal Fesch having been banished from France by the law
of January 12, 1816, "the Pope no longer regarded the person of the
cardinal, but the diocese that had to be saved at any cost, by virtue of
the principle salus populi suprema lex. Consequently, he prohibited the
cardinal from "exercising episcopal jurisdiction in his metropolitan
church, and constituted M. de Bernis administrator of that church,
spiritually as well as temporally, notwithstanding all constitutions
decreed even by the general councils, the apostolic ordinances,
privileges, etc." In both cases the situation was similar, and, in the
latter as in the former case, motives of the same order warranted the
same use of the same power.

But the situation, in being prolonged, multiplied, for the Church, the
number of urgent cases, and, for the sovereign pontiff the number of
cases of intervention. Since 1789, the entire civil order of things,
constitutional, political, social and territorial, had become singularly
unstable, not only in France but in Europe, not only on the old
continent but likewise on the new one. Sovereign states by hundreds
sunk under the strokes and counter-strokes, indefinitely propagated and
enforced by the philosophy of the eighteenth century and of the French
Revolution; others, by dozens, arose in their place, and, in these,
different dynasties succeeded each other; here, Catholic populations
falling under the rule of a schismatic or Protestant prince; there, this
or that Catholic country, for fifteen years included in a mixed state,
detached from it and constituted apart. In Protestant America, the
Catholics, increased to millions, formed new communities in Catholic
America, the colonies had become independent; almost everywhere in
America and in Europe the maxims of government and of public opinion
had changed. Now, after each of these changes, some initiative,
some direction, some authority was necessary, in order to reconcile
ecclesiastical with lay institutions; the Pope was on hand, and on each
occasion he establishes this concord.[5208] At one time, by a diplomatic
act analogous to the French Concordat of 1801, he negotiates with the
sovereign of the country--Bavaria, Wurtemburg, Prussia, Austria, Spain,
Portugal, the two Sicilies, the Netherlands, Belgium and Russia. Again,
owing to the tolerant liberalism, or to the Constitutional indifference
of the lay government, he alone prescribes, notably in Holland, in
Ireland, in England, in Canada, and in the United States, a division
of the country into ecclesiastical districts, the erection of new
bishoprics, and the lasting regulation of the hierarchy, the discipline,
the means of support and the recruiting of the clergy. Again, when
sovereignty is in dispute, as after the emancipation of the Spanish
colonies, he does without it, in spite of the opposition of the
mother-country, and, "without putting himself in relation with the new
governments,[5209] he, acting for himself, "that he may put an end
to the widowhood of the Churches," appoints bishops, assigns them a
provisional régime in anticipation of the epoch when, in concert with
better founded governments, he will decree their definitive régime. In
this way, all the great existing churches of the Catholic universe are
the work of the Pope, his latest work, his own creation attested by a
positive act of contiguous date, and of which the souvenir is vivid:
he has not recognized them--he has made them; he has given them their
external form and their internal structure; no one of them can look
within itself without finding in its laws the fresh imprint of the
sovereign hand which has fashioned it; none of them can assert or even
believe itself legitimate without declaring the superior authority to be
legitimate which has just endowed it with life and being. The last
step, the greatest of all, above the terrestrial and practical order of
things, in speculative theology, in the revelation of the supernatural,
in the definition of things that are divine: the Pope, the better to
prove his autocracy, in 1854, decrees, solely, of his own accord, a new
dogma, the immaculate conception of the Virgin, and he is careful to
note that he does it without the concurrence of the bishops; they were
on hand, but they neither deliberated nor decided.[5210]

Thus arise durable powers, spiritual or temporal, little by little,
through the uninterrupted and uncontested series of their acts; from
1791 to 1870 all ecclesiastical precedents, one added to another, became
consolidated, one through the other and through their mass; story after
story, steadily ascending and converging to raise the Pope higher still,
until at last, on the summit of the edifice, the Holy See becomes
the keystone of the arch, the omnipotence of fact being completed by
omnipotence of right.

Meanwhile Catholic opinion came to the aid of pontifical opinion, and,
in France, the clergy spontaneously became ultramontane because there
was no longer any motive for remaining Gallican. Since the Revolution,
the Concordat and the Organic Articles, all the sources which maintained
in it a national as well as particularist spirit, had dried up; in
ceased being a distinct, proprietary and favored body; its members are
no longer leagued together by the community of a temporal interest,
by the need of defending their privileges, by the faculty of acting
in concert, by the right of holding periodical assemblies; they are no
longer, as formerly, attached to the civil power by great social and
legal advantages, by their honorable priority in lay society, by their
immunities from taxation, by the presence and influence of their bishops
in the provincial parliaments, by the noble origin and magnificent
endowments of nearly all their prelates, by the repressive support which
the secular arm lent to the church against dissenters and free-thinkers,
by the immemorial legislation and customs which, erecting Catholicism
into a State religion, imposed the Catholic faith on the monarch, not
alone in his quality of a private individual and to fix his personal
belief, but again in his quality of public magistrate, to influence his
policy and to share in his government. This last article is capital,
and out of its abrogation the rest follows: at this turn of the road
the French clergy is thrown off the Gallican track, every step it
takes after this being on the way to Rome. For, according to Catholic
doctrine, outside of the Roman Church there is no salvation; to enter
it, to rest in it, to be led by it is the highest interest and first
duty of man; it is the unique and infallible guide; all acts that it
condemns are culpable, and not only private acts, but likewise all
public acts; the sovereign who commits them may, as an individual, be
Catholic by profession and even loyal at heart; but, as a ruler, he is
disloyal, he has lost his semi-ecclesiastic character, he has ceased to
be "the exterior bishop," he is not worthy to command a clerical body.
Henceforth, the Christian conscience no longer bows down before him
with love and respect; nothing remains to him for support but social
prudence; and again is it with resignation, because the Church commands
obedience to the authorities, and the same Church commands disobedience
to these authorities when, abusing their power, they encroach on its
rights.

Now, ten years ago, the State had done nothing else, and, to the old
Concordat which was not good, it had just substituted a Concordat that
was worse. This new alliance, concluded by it with the Church in 1802,
is not a religious marriage, the solemn sacrament by which, at Rheims,
she and the King promised to live together and in harmony in the same
faith, but a simple civil contract, more precisely the legal regulation
of a lasting and deliberate divorce.--In a paroxysm of despotism the
State has stripped the Church of its possessions and turned it out of
doors, without clothes or bread, to beg on the highways; next, in a fit
of rage, its aim was to kill it outright, and it did partially strangle
it. Recovering its reason, but having ceased to be Catholic, it has
forced the signature of a pact which is repugnant, and which reduces
their moral union to physical cohabitation. Willingly or not, the
two contracting parties are to continue living together in the same
domicile, since that is the only one they possess; but, as there is
incompatibility of humor, they will do well to live apart. To this end,
the State assigns a small, distinct lodging to the Church and allows her
a meager supply of food; this done, it fancies that it may cry quits;
and, worse still, it imagines that she is always its subject, and still
pretends to the same authority over her; the State is determined to
retain all rights conferred upon it by the old marriage, and these
rights it exercises and adds to. Meanwhile, it admits into the same
lodging three other Churches which it subjects to the same régime: that
makes four mess-rooms to be maintained and which it watches, supports
and utilizes the best it can for the temporal advantage of the
household. There is nothing more odious to the Catholic Church than this
advertised, practical polygamy, this subvention granted indifferently
to all cults, this patronage in common, more insulting than abandonment,
this equal treatment[5211] which places the pulpit of truth and the
pulpits of falsehood, the ministry of salvation and the ministries
of perdition, on the same footing. Nothing is more serviceable for
alienating a Catholic clergy, for making it consider civil power as
foreign, usurping, or even inimical, for detaching the Gallican Church
from its French center, for driving it back towards its Roman center and
for handing it over to the Pope.

Henceforth, the latter is the unique center, the sole surviving head
of the Church, inseparable from it because he is naturally its head and
because it is naturally his body; and all the more because this mutual
tie has been strengthened by trials. Head and body have been struck
together, by the same hands, and each on the other's account. The Pope
has suffered like the Church, along with and for it. Pius VI., dethroned
and borne off by the Directory, died in prison at Valence; Pius VII.,
dethroned and carried off by Napoleon, is confined, sequestered and
outraged for four years in France, while all generous hearts take sides
with the oppressed against his oppressors. Moreover, his dispossession
adds to his prestige: it can no longer be claimed that territorial
interests prevail with him over Catholic interests; therefore, according
as his temporal power diminishes his spiritual power expands, to such an
extent that, in the end, after three-quarters of a century, just at the
moment when the former is to fall to the ground the latter is to rise
above the clouds; through the effacement of his human character his
superhuman character becomes declared; the more the sovereign prince
disappears, the more does the sovereign pontiff assert himself. The
clergy, despoiled like him of its hereditary patrimony and confined like
him to its sacerdotal office, exposed to the same dangers, menaced by
the same enemies, rallies around him the same as an army around its
general; inferiors and superiors, they are all priests alike and are
nothing else, with a clearer and clearer conscience of the solidarity
which binds them together and subordinates the inferiors to the
superiors. From one ecclesiastical generation to another,[5212] the
number of the refractory, of the intractable and of independents,
rigorists or the lax, goes on decreasing, some, conscientious
Jansenists, hardened and sectarians of the "Little Church," others,
semi-philosophers, tolerant and liberal, both inheriting too narrow
convictions or too broad opinions for maintaining themselves and
spreading in the newly founded society (milieu).[5213] They die out,
one by one, while their doctrines fall into discredit and then into
oblivion. A new spirit animates the new clergy, and, after 1808,
Napoleon remarks of it, "It does not complain of the old one, and is
even satisfied with it; but, he says, they are bringing up new priests
in a sombre fanatical doctrine: there is nothing Gallican in the
youthful clergy,"[5214] no sympathy for the civil power. After Napoleon,
and on getting out of his terrible hands, the Catholics have good
reasons for their repugnance to his theology; it has put too many
Catholics in jail, the most eminent in rank, in holiness, bishops and
cardinals, including the Pope. Gallican maxims are dishonored by the use
Napoleon has made of them. Canon law, in public instruction and in
the seminaries (of the Catholics), ends insensibly in unlooked-for
conclusions; texts and arguments opposed to the Pope's authority seem
weaker and weaker; texts and arguments favorable to the Pope's authority
seem stronger and stronger;[5215] the doctors most deferred to are
no longer Gerson and Bossuet, but Bellarmin and Suarez; flaws are
discovered in the decrees of the council of Constance; the Declaration
of the clergy of France in 1682 is found to contain errors condemned
and open to condemnation.[5216] After 1819, M. de Maistre, a powerful
logician, matchless herald and superb champion, in his book on "The
Pope," justifies, prepares and announces the coming constitution of
the Church.--Step by step, the assent of Catholic community is won or
mastered;[5217] on approaching 1870, it is nearly universal; after 1870,
it is wholly so and could not be otherwise; whoever refuses to submit is
excluded from the community and excludes himself from it, for he denies
a dogma which it professes, a revealed dogma, an article of faith which
the Pope and the council have just decreed. Thenceforward, the Pope,
in his magisterial pulpit, in the eyes of every man who is and wants to
remain Catholic, is infallible; when he gives his decision on faith or
on morals, Jesus Christ himself speaks by his mouth, and his definitions
of doctrine are "irrefutable," "they are so of themselves, they
alone, through their own virtue, and not by virtue of the Church's
consent."[5218] For the same reason, his authority is absolute, not only
in matters which concern faith and morals, but again in matters which
concern the discipline and government of the Church."[5219] His judgment
may be resorted to in every ecclesiastical case; nobody is allowed
to question his verdict; "nobody is allowed to appeal to the future
oecumenical council;"[5220] He has not only "a priority by right,
an office of inspection and of direction; he holds again priority
of jurisdiction, a full and supreme power of jurisdiction over the
universal Church,... ", "the total plenitude of this supreme power," not
indirectly and extraordinarily, but "directly and ordinarily, over all
churches and over each one of them, over all pastors and all believers,
over each believer and each of the pastors."--Read this in the Latin:
each word, through its ancient root and through its historic vegetation,
contributes to strengthening the despotic and Roman sense of the text;
the language of the people which invented and practiced dictatorship had
to be employed for the affirmation of dictatorship with that precision
and that copiousness, with that excess of energy and of conviction.




II. The Bishops and their new Situation.

     The bishop in his diocese.--Change of situation and rôle.
     --Depreciation of other local authorities.--Diminution of
     other ecclesiastical authorities.--Decline of the chapter
     and the jurisdiction.--The bishop alone dispenses rigors and
     favors.--Use of displacement.--Second-class clergy subject
     to military discipline.--Why it submits to this.

The change brought about in the condition and role of the bishop was
not less grave. Along with the court noblesse and great ecclesiastical
property, we see the prelate of the old régime disappearing by degrees,
the younger son of a noble family, promoted by favor and very young,
endowed with a large income and much more a man of the world than of
the Church. In 1789, out of 134 bishops or archbishops, only 5 were of
plebeian origin; in 1889, out of 90 bishops or archbishops there are
only 4 of them nobles;[5221] previous to the Revolution, the titular of
an Episcopal see enjoyed, on the average, a revenue of 100,000 francs;
at the present day, he receives only a salary of from 10,000 to 15,000
francs.[5222] In place of the grand seignior, an amiable and magnificent
host, given to display and to entertaining the best company, keeping
an open table in his diocese when he happens to be there, but generally
absent, an habitué of Paris or a courtier at Versailles, we see another
stepping forward to take his seat He is bearing the same title, is
a personage whose habits and origins are different, a resident
administrator, much less ornamental but much more active and governing,
provided with a more ample jurisdiction, with more absolute authority
and wielding more effective influence. The final effect of the
Revolution in relation to the bishop is the same as in relation to the
Pope, and in the French diocese, as in the universal Church, the modern
régime sets up a central, extraordinary, enormous power of which the
ancient regime knew nothing.

Formerly, the bishop encountered around him, on the spot, equals and
rivals, bodies of men or individuals, as independent and powerful as
himself, irremovable, owners of estates, dispensers of offices and of
favors, local authorities by legal sanction, permanent patrons of a
permanent class of dependents. In his own cathedral, his metropolitan
chapter was, like himself, a collator of benefice; elsewhere, other
chapters were so likewise and knew how to maintain their rights against
his supremacy. In each body of regular clergy, every grand abbot or
prior, every noble abbess was, like himself, a sort of sovereign prince.
The territorial seignior and justiciary on his own domain, was through
the partial survival of the old wholly secular feudal order equally
sovereign. Likewise sovereign, was, for its part, the parliament of
the province, with its rights of registry and of remonstrance, with
its administrative attributes and interference, with its train of loyal
auxiliaries and subordinates, from the judges of the presidencies and
bailiwicks down to the corporations of advocates, prosecutors and other
members of the bar.[5223] The parliamentarians of the district capital
(chef-lieu), purchasers and owners of their offices, magistrates from
father to son, much wealthier and much prouder than nowadays, were,
in their old hereditary mansions, the real chiefs of the province, its
constant representatives on the spot, its popular defenders against
ministerial and royal absolutism. All these powers, which once
counterbalanced episcopal power, have disappeared. Restricted to their
judicial office, the tribunals have ceased to be political authorities
and moderators of the central government: in the town and department,
the mayor and general councilors, appointed or elected for a certain
time, enjoy only temporary credit; the prefect, the military commandant,
the rector, the treasurer-general are merely passing strangers.
The local circumscription, for a century, is an exterior post where
individuals live together in contact but not associated; no longer
does any intimate, lasting and strong bond exist between them; nothing
remains of the old province but a population of inhabitants, a given
number of private persons under unstable functionaries. The bishop
alone has maintained himself intact and erect, a dignitary for life, the
conductor, by title and in fact, of a good many persons, the stationary
and patient undertaker of a great service, the unique general and
undisputed commander of a special militia which, through conscience and
professions, gathers close around him and, every morning, awaits his
orders. Because in his essence, he is a governor of souls. Revolution
and centralization have not encroached on his ecclesiastical
prerogative. Thanks to this indelible quality he has been able to endure
the suppression of the others; these have come back to him of themselves
and with others added, comprising local superiority, real importance and
local ascendancy; including the various honorable appellations which,
under the ancient régime, denoted his rank and preeminence; at the
present day, under the modern régime, they are no longer in use for a
layman and even for a minister of state; after 1802, one of the articles
of the Organic Laws,[5224] interdicts them to bishops and archbishops;
they are "allowed to add to their name only the title of citizen and
monsieur." But practically, except in the official almanac, everybody
addresses a prelate as "my lord," and in the clergy, among believers,
in writing or in speaking to him, he is called "your Grace," under the
republic as under the monarchy.

Thus, in this provincial soil where other powers have lost their roots,
not only has he kept his, but he has extended them and much farther; he
has grown beyond all measure and now the whole ecclesiastical territory
belongs to him. Formerly, on this territory, many portions of it, and
quite large ones, were enclosures set apart, reserves that an immemorial
wall prevented him from entering. It was not he who, in a great majority
of cases, conferred livings and offices; it was not he who, in more than
one-half of them, appointed to vacant curacies. At Besançon,[5225] among
1500 benefices and livings, he once conferred less than 100 of them,
while his metropolitan chapter appointed as many curés as himself; at
Arras, he appointed only 47 curés and his chapter 66; at Saint-Omer,
among the collators of curacies he ranked only third, after the abbey
of Saint-Martin and after the chapter of the cathedral. At Troyes, he
could dispose only of 197 curacies out of 372; at Boulogne, out of 180,
he had only 80, and this again because the chapter voluntarily abandoned
to him 16. Naturally, the eyes of all candidates turned towards the
collator; and, among the highest and most lucrative places, those
which gave the least trouble and afforded the most satisfaction,
all sinecures, ranks, simple benefices and large urban curacies,
probendaries and canonicates, most of the offices, titles, and incomes
that might tempt human ambition, were in the hands, not of the bishop,
but of the king or of the Pope, of an abbot or prior, of an abbess,
or of a certain university,[5226] of this or that cathedral or
college-body, of a lay seignior, of a patentee, or of an indultaire,
and often of the titulary himself. Thus, the hold of the bishop on his
clercs was feeble; he did not hold them through the hope of a favor.
And, on the other hand, he had still less hold on them, no hold at
all, through fear of losing favor. They might displease him almost with
impunity; his faculty for punishment was much more restricted than his
means of recompense. His subordinates could find shelter and refuge
against his displeasure, and even against his hostility. In the first
place, and as a principle, a titulary, whether ecclesiastic or secular,
owned his office and hence was irremovable; they themselves, plain
vicar-curates, the humble desservans[5227] of a rural parish, had
acquired this privilege through the declarations of 1726 and 1731.[5228]
Moreover, in case of interdiction, suspension or of censure, a titulary
could always recur to the courts against episcopal judgment and any
other, against all encroachment on spiritual or temporal prerogatives,
or on those which were useful or honorary belonging to his charge.

These courts were of two kinds, one ecclesiastical and the other
secular, and in each an appeal could be made from a lower to a higher
court, from the diocesan official to the metropolitan official, and from
the présidial to the parliament, with a complete judicial staff,
judge, assessors, public ministry, prosecutors, advocates and clerks,
restricted to the observing of all judicial formalities, authentic
papers, citations of witnesses and challenges of testimony,
interrogatories and pleadings, allegation of canons, laws and
precedents, presence of the defendant, opposing arguments, delays
in procedure, publicity and scandal. Before the slow march and
inconveniences of such a trial, the bishop often avoided giving
judgment, and all the more because his verdicts, even when confirmed by
the ecclesiastical court, might be warded off or rendered ineffective
by the lay tribunal; for, from the former to the latter, there was
an appeal under writ of error, and the latter, a jealous rival of the
former, was ill-disposed towards the sacerdotal authorities;[5229]
besides, in the latter case, far more than in the former, the bishop
found confronting him not merely the more or less legal right of his own
party, but again the allies and patrons of his party, corporations and
individuals who, according to an accepted usage, interfered through
their solicitations with the judges and openly placed their credit at
the service of their protégé. With so many spokes in the wheels, the
working of an administrative machine was difficult; to give it effective
motion, it required the steady pressure, the constant starting, the
watchful and persistent efforts of a laborious, energetic, and callous
hand, while, under the ancient régime, the delicate white hands of a
gentleman-prelate were ill-adapted to this rude business; they were
too nicely washed, too soft. To manage personally and on the spot a
provincial, complicated and rusty machine, always creaking and groaning,
to give one's self up to it, to urge and adjust twenty local wheels, to
put up with knocks and splashes, to become a business man, that is to
say a hard worker--nothing was less desirable for a grand seignior of
that epoch. In the Church as in the State, he made the most of his rank;
he collected and enjoyed its fruits, that is to say money, honors and
gratifications, and, among these gratifications, the principal one,
leisure; hence, he abandoned every special duty, the daily manipulation
of men and things, the practical direction, all effective government, to
his ecclesiastical or lay intendants, to subordinates whom he scarcely
looked after and who, at his own house, on his own domain, replaced
him as fixed residents. The bishop, in his own diocese, left the
administration in the hands of his canons and grand-vicars; "the
official decided without his meddling."[5230] The machine thus worked
alone and by itself, with very few shocks, in the old rut established by
routine; he helped it along only by the influence he exercised at Paris
and Versailles, by recommendations to the ministers in reality, he
was merely the remote and worldly representative of his ecclesiastical
principality at court and in the drawing-room.[5231] When, from time
to time, he made his appearance there, the bells were rung; deputations
from all bodies hurried to his antechambers; each authority in turn, and
according to the order of precedence, paid him its little compliment,
which compliment he graciously returned and then, the homage being over,
he distributed among them benedictions and smiles. After this, with
equal dignity and still more graciously throughout his sojourn, he
invited the most eligible to his table and, in his episcopal palace
or in his country-house, he treated them as guests. This done, he had
performed his duty; the rest was left to his secretaries, ecclesiastical
officials and clerks, men of the bureaux, specialists and "plodders."
"Did you read my pastoral letter?" said a bishop to Piron. And Piron,
who was very outspoken, dared reply, "Yes, my lord. And yourself?"

Under the modern régime, this suzerain for show, negligent and
intermittent, is succeeded by an active sovereign whose reign is
personal and constant; the limited and easy monarchy of the diocese is
converted into an universal and absolute monarchy. When the bishop,
once invested and consecrated, enters the choir of his cathedral to the
reverberations of the organ, lighted with wax candles amidst clouds of
incense, and seats himself in solemn pomp[5232] "on his throne," he is
a prince who takes possession of his government, which possession is
not nominal or partial, but real and complete. He holds in his hand "the
splendid cross which the priests of his diocese have presented to him,"
in witness of and symbolizing their voluntary, eager and full
obedience; and this pastoral baton is larger than the old one. In the
ecclesiastical herd, no head browses at a distance or under cover; high
or low, all are within reach, all eyes are turned towards the episcopal
crook; at a sign made by the crook, and according to the signal, each
head forthwith stands, advances or recedes: it knows too well that the
shepherd's hands are free and that it is subject to its will. Napoleon,
in his reconstruction of the diocese, made additions to only one of the
diocesan powers, that of the bishop; he suffered the others to remain
low down, on the ground. The delays, complications and frictions of a
divided government were repugnant to him; he had no taste for and
no comprehension of any but a concentrated government; he found it
convenient to deal with but one man, a prefect of the spiritual order,
as pliable as his colleague of the temporal order, a mitered grand
functionary--such was the bishop in his eyes. This is the reason why
he did not oblige him to surround himself with constitutional and
moderating authorities; he did not restore the ancient bishop's court
and the ancient chapter; he allowed his prelates themselves to pen the
new diocesan statute.--Naturally, in the division of powers, the bishop
reserved the best part to himself, the entire substance, and, to limit
his local omnipotence, there remained simply lay authority. But, in
practice, the shackles by which the civil government kept him in its
dependence, broke or became relaxed one by one. Among the Organic
Articles, almost all of them which subjected or repressed the bishop
fell into discredit or into desuetude. Meanwhile, those which authorized
and exalted the bishop remained in vigor and maintained their effect.
Consequently, Napoleon's calculation, in relation to the bishop or in
relation to the Pope, proved erroneous. He wanted to unite in one person
two incompatible characters, to convert the dignitaries of the Church
into dignitaries of the State, to make functionaries out of potentates.
The functionary insensibly disappeared; the potentate alone subsisted
and still subsists.

At the present day, conformably to the statute of 1802, the cathedral
chapter,[5233] except in case of one interim, is a lifeless and
still-born body, a vain simulachre; it is always, by title or on paper,
the Catholic "senate," the bishop's obligatory "council";[5234] but he
takes his councillors where he pleases, outside of the chapter, if that
suits him, and he is free not to take any of them, "to govern alone, to
do all himself." It is he who appoints to all offices, to the five or
six hundred offices of his diocese; he is the universal collator of
these and, nine times out of ten, the sole collator; excepting eight or
nine canonships and the thirty or forty cantonal curacies, which the
government must approve, he alone makes appointments and without any
person's concurrence. Thus, in the way of favors, his clerical body has
nothing to expect from anybody but himself.--And, on the other hand,
they no longer enjoy any protection against his harshness; the hand
which punishes is still less restrained than that which rewards; like
the cathedral chapter, the ecclesiastical tribunal has lost its
consistency and independence, its efficiency; nothing remains of the
ancient bishop's court but an appearance and a name.[5235]

At one time, the bishop in person is himself the whole court; he
deliberates only with himself and decides ex informata conscientia
without a trial, without advice, and, if he chooses, in his own cabinet
with closed doors, in private according to facts, the value of which
he alone estimates, and through motives of which he is the sole
appreciator. At another time, the presiding magistrate is one of
his grand-vicars, his revocable delegate, his confidential man, his
megaphone, in short, another self, and this official acts without the
restraint of ancient regulations, of a fixed and understood procedure
beforehand, of a series of judicial formalities, of verifications and
the presence of witnesses, of the delays and all other legal precautions
which guard the judge against prejudice, haste, error, and ignorance and
without which justice always risks becoming injustice. In both cases,
the head over which the sentence is suspended lacks guarantees, and,
once pronounced, this sentence is definitive. For, on appeal to the
court of the metropolitan bishop, it is always confirmed;[5236] the
bishops support each other, and, let the appellant be right or wrong,
the appeal is in itself a bad mark against him: he did not submit at
once, he stood out against reproof, he was lacking in humility, he has
set an example of insubordination, and this alone is a grave fault.
There remains the recourse to Rome; but Rome is far off,[5237] and,
while maintaining her superior jurisdiction, she does not willingly
cancel an episcopal verdict; she treats prelates with respect, she is
careful of her lieutenant-generals, her collectors of Saint Peter's
pence. As to the lay tribunals, these have declared themselves
incompetent,[5238] and the new canon law teaches that never, "under the
pretext of a writ of error, may a priest make an appeal to the secular
magistrate";[5239] through this appeal, "he derogates from the authority
and liberty of the Church and is liable to the gravest censures;" he
betrays his order.

Such is now, for the lower clergy, ecclesiastical law, and likewise
secular law, both agreeing together in not affording him protection;
add to this change in the jurisprudence which concerns him a no less
divisive change in the jurisprudence which concerns him a no less
decisive change in the titles which place and qualify him. Before 1789,
there were in France 36,000 curés entitled irremovable; at the present
day, there are only 3,425; before 1789, there were only 2500 curés
entirely removable, while to-day there are 34,042;[5240] all of the
latter, appointed by the bishop without the approbation of the civil
powers, are removable at his discretion; their parochial ministry is
simply a provisional commission; they may be placed elsewhere,
passing from one precarious curacy to another no less precarious. "At
Valence,[5241] Mgr. Chartrousse, in one month transferred 150 priests
from one parish to another. In 1835, in the diocese of Valence, 35
transfers were sent out by the same mail." No assistant-priest, however
long in his parish, feels that he is at home there, on his own domain,
for the rest of his life; he is merely there in garrison, about the same
as lay functionaries and with less security, even when irreproachable.
For he may be transplanted, not alone for spiritual reasons, but
likewise for political reasons. He has not grown less worthy, but the
municipal council or the mayor have taken a dislike to his person;
consequently to tranquilize things, he is displaced. Far better, he had
become worthy and is on good terms with the municipal council and the
mayor; wherever he has lived he has known how to mollify these,
and consequently "he is removed from parish to parish,[5242] chosen
expressly to be put into those where there are troublesome, wrangling,
malevolent, and impious mayors." It is for the good of the service and
in the interest of the Church. The bishop subordinates persons to this
superior interest. The legislation of 1801 and 1802 has conferred full
powers upon him and he exercises them; among the many grips by which he
holds his clergy the strongest is the power of removal, and he uses it.
Into all civil or ecclesiastical institutions Napoleon, directly or by
counterstrokes, has injected his spirit, the military spirit; hence the
authoritative régime, still more firmly established in the Church than
in the State, because that is the essence of the Catholic institution;
far from being relaxed in this, it has become stricter; at present it is
avowed, proclaimed, and even made canonical; the bishop, in our days,
in fact as in law, is a general of division, and, in law as in fact,
his curés are simply sergeants or corporals.[5243] Command, from such
a lofty grade falls direct, with extraordinary force, on grades so low,
and, at the first stroke, is followed by passive obedience. Discipline
in a diocese is as perfect as in an army corps, and the prelates
publicly take pride in it. "It is an insult," said Cardinal de
Bonnechose to the Senate,[5244] "to suppose that we are not masters
in our own house, that we cannot direct our clergy, and that it is the
clergy which directs us... There is no general within its walls who
would accept the reproach that could not compel the obedience of
his soldiers. Each of us has command of a regiment, and the regiment
marches."




III. The new Bishop.

     Change in the habits and ways of the bishop.--His origin,
     age, capability, mode of living, labor, initiative,
     undertakings, and moral and social ascendancy. [5245]

In order to make troops march, a staff, even a croisier, is not enough;
to compulsory subordination voluntary subordination must be added;
therefore, legal authority in the chief should be accompanied with moral
authority; otherwise he will not be loyally supported and to the end.
In 1789, this was not the case with the bishop; on two occasions, and at
two critical moments, the clergy of the inferior order formed a separate
band, at first at the elections, by selecting for deputies curés and not
prelates, and next in the national assembly, by abandoning the prelates
to unite with the Third Estate. The intimate hold of the chief on
his men was relaxed or broken. His ascendency over them was no
longer sufficiently great; they no longer had confidence in him. His
subordinates had come to regard him as he was, a privileged individual,
sprung from a another stock and furnished by a class apart, bishop by
right of birth, without a prolonged apprenticeship, having rendered no
services, without tests of merit, almost an interloper in the body of
his clergy, a Church parasite accustomed to spending the revenues of his
diocese away from his diocese, idle and ostentatious, often a
shameless gallant or obnoxious hunter, disposed to be a philosopher
and free-thinker, and who lacked two qualifications for a leader of
Christian priests: first, ecclesiastical deportment, and next, and very
often, Christian faith.[5246]

All these gaps in and discrepancies of episcopal character, all these
differences and distances (which existed before 1789), between the
origins, interests, habits, and manners of the lower and the upper
clergy, all these inequalities and irregularities which alienated
inferiors from the superior, have disappeared; the modern régime has
leveled the wall of separation established by the ancient régime between
the bishop and his priests. At the present day he is, like them, a
plebeian, of common extraction, and sometimes very low, one being the
son of a village shoemaker, another the natural son of a poor workwoman,
both being men of feeling and never blushing at their humble origin,
openly tender and respectful to their mothers,--a certain bishop lodging
his mother, formerly a servant, in his episcopal palace and giving her
the first seat at his table among the most honored and noblest of his
guests.[5247] He is "one of fortune's officers," that is to say, a
meritorious and old officer.[5248] According the "Almanac" of 1889, the
three youngest are from forty-seven to forty-nine years of age; all the
others are fifty and over; among the latter, three fourths of them are
over sixty. As a general rule, a priest cannot become a bishop short of
twenty or twenty-five years' service in lower or average grades; he must
have remained in each grade a longer or shorter period, in turn vicar,
curé, vicar-general, canon, head of a seminary, sometimes coadjutor,
and almost always have distinguished himself in some office, either
as preacher or catechist, professor or administrator, canonist or
theologian. His full competence cannot be contested, and he enjoys a
right to exact full obedience; he has himself rendered it up to his
consecration; "he boasts of it," and the example he proposes to his
priests is the one he has himself given.[5249] On the other hand, his
moderate way of living excites but little envy; it is about like that of
a general of division, or of a prefect, or of a high civil functionary
who, lacking personal fortune, has nothing but his salary to live on. He
does not display, as formerly, confessionals lined with satin, kitchen
utensil of massive silver, hunting accoutrements, a hierarchical staff
of major-domos, ushers, valets, and liveried lackeys, stables and
carriages, lay grand-seigniors, vassals of his suzerainty and figuring
at his consecration, a princely ceremonial of parade and homage, a
pompous show of receptions and of hospitalities. There is nothing but
what is necessary, the indispensable instruments of his office: an
ordinary carriage for his episcopal journeys and town visits, three
or four domestics for manual service, three or four secretaries for
official writings, some old mansion or other, cheaply repaired and
refurnished without ostentation, its rooms and bureaus being those of an
administrator, business man, and responsible head of a numerous staff;
in effect, he is responsible for a good many subordinates, he has a
good deal to attend to; he works himself, looking after the whole and
in detail, keeping classified files by means of a chronological and
systematic collection,[5250] like the general director of a vast
company; if he enjoys greater honors, he is subject to greater
exigencies; assuredly, his predecessors under the ancient régime,
delicate Epicureans, would not have wished for such a life; they would
not have considered the benefit worth the effort.

Even when old, he draws on his energies; he officiates, he preaches,
he presides at long ceremonies, he ordains seminarians, he confirms
thousands of children,[5251] he visits one after another the parishes
in his diocese; often, at the end of his administration, he has visited
them all and many times. Meanwhile, shut up in his episcopal cabinet, he
is constantly inspecting these four or five hundred parishes; he reads
or listens to reports, informs himself on the number of communicants, on
what is required in worship, on the financial state of the fabrique,
on the attitude of the inhabitants, on the good or bad dispositions of
municipal counselors and mayors, on the local cause of dissension
and conflict, on the conduct and character of the curé or vicar; each
resident ecclesiastic needs guidance or maintenance between intemperate
zeal and inert lukewarmness, evenly balanced according as parishes and
circumstances vary, but always in a way to prevent false steps, to turn
aside mistakes, to humor opinion, to stop scandals. For the entire
life of the clergyman, not only his public life but again his personal,
domestic, private life, belongs to and concerns the Church:[5252] there
must be no evil reports, even without foundation, on his account;
if these occur, the bishop summons him to headquarters, warns him,
admonishes him, and, without unburdening himself by handing the
matter over to a responsible tribunal, he alone passes judgment after
personally conducting the investigations, suffering the worries, and
carrying out the painful, painstaking labor always attendant on direct
absolute power. Likewise, in relation to his upper and his lower
seminary: here are two indispensable nurseries of which he is the head
gardener, attentive to filling annual vacancies and seeking proper
subjects for these throughout his diocese, ever verifying and
cultivating their vocations; he confers scholarships; he dictates rules
and regulations; appoints and dismisses, displaces and procures as he
pleases, the director and professors; he takes them, if he chooses, out
of his diocese or out of the body of regular clergy; he prescribes a
doctrine to them, methods, ways of thinking and teaching, and he keeps
his eye, beyond his present or future priests, on three or four hundred
monks and on fourteen hundred nuns.

As to the monks, so long as they remain inside their dwellings, in
company together and at home, he has nothing to say to them; but,
when they come to preach, confess, officiate or teach in public on his
ground, they fall under his jurisdiction; in concert with their superior
and with the Pope, he has rights over them and he uses them. They are
now his auxiliaries assigned to or summoned by him, available troops and
a reinforcement, so many chosen companies expressly ready, each with
its own discipline, its particular uniform, its special weapon, and
who bring to him in following a campaign under his orders, distinct
aptitudes and a livelier zeal. He needs them[5253] in order to make
up for the insufficiency of his local clergy in arousing the spirit
of devotion in his parishes and in enforcing sound doctrine in his
seminaries. Now, between these two forces a common understanding is
difficult; the former, adjuncts and flying about, march in front; the
latter, holding the ground and stationary, look upon the new-comers as
usurpers who lessen both their popularity and their fees; a bishop must
possess great tact as well as energy to impose on both bodies of
this clergy, if not an intimate union, at least mutual aid and a
collaboration without conflict.--As to the nuns,[5254] he is their
ordinary, the sole arbiter, overseer and ruler over all these cloistered
lives; he receives their vows, and renders them free of them; it is he
who, after due inquiry and examination, authorizes each entrance
into the community or a return to society, at first each admission or
novitiate, and next each profession of faith or assumption of the veil,
every dismissal or departure of a nun, every claim that one makes,
every grave act of severity or decision on the part of the superior.
He approves of, or appoints, the confessor of the establishment; he
maintains seclusion in it, he draws tighter or relaxes the observances;
he himself enters its doors by privilege of his office, and, with his
own eyes, he inspects its régime, spiritual and temporal, through
a right of control which extends from the direction of souls to the
administration of property.

To so many obligatory matters he adds others which are voluntary, not
alone works of piety, those relating to worship, propaganda, diocesan
missions, catechizing adults, brotherhoods for perpetual adoration,
meetings for the uninterrupted recital of the rosary, Peter's pence,
seminary funds, Catholic journals and reviews-but, again, institutions
for charity and education.[5255] In the way of charity, he founds or
supports twenty different kinds, sixty in one diocese alone, general
and special services, infant nurseries, clubs, asylums, lodging-houses,
patronages, societies for helping and placing the poor, for the sick at
home and in the hospitals, for suckling infants, for the deaf and dumb,
for the blind, for old men, for orphans, for repentant prostitutes, for
prisoners, for soldiers in garrison, for workmen, apprentices, youths,
and quantities of others. In the way of education, there are yet more of
them--works which the Catholic chiefs have most at heart; without these,
it is impossible in modern society to preserve the faith in each new
generation. Hence, at each turning-point of political history, we see
the bishops benefiting by the toleration or warding off the intolerance
of the teaching State, competing with it, erecting alongside of its
public schools free schools of its own, directed or served by priests
or religious brotherhoods;--after the suppression of the university
monopoly in 1850, more than one hundred colleges[5256] for secondary
education; after the favorable law of 1875, four or five provincial
faculties or universities for superior instruction after the hostile
laws of 1882, many thousands of parochial schools for primary
instruction.

Foundation and support, all this is expensive. The bishop requires a
great deal of money, especially since the State, become ill-disposed,
cuts off clerical resources as much as possible, no longer maintains
scholarships in the seminaries, deprives suspicious desservans of their
small stipends, eats into the salaries of the prelates, throws
obstacles in the way of communal liberalities, taxes and over taxes
the congregations, so that, not merely through the diminution of its
allowances it relieves itself at the expense of the Church, but again,
through the increase of its imposts, it burdens the Church for its
own advantage. The episcopacy obtains all necessary funds through
collections in the churches and at domiciles, through the gifts and
subscriptions of the faithful; and, every year, it needs millions, apart
from the budget appropriation, for its faculties and universities
in which it installs largely paid professors, for the construction,
location and arrangement of its countless buildings, for the expenses of
its minor schools, for the support of its ten thousand seminarists, for
the general out-lay on so many charitable institutions; and it is the
bishop who, their principal promoter, must provide for this, all the
more because he has often taken it upon himself in advance, and made
himself responsible for it by either a written or verbal promise. He
responds to all these engagements; he has funds on hand at the maturity
of each contract. In 1883, the bishop of Nancy, in need of one hundred
thousand francs to build a school-house with a work-room attached to it,
mentions this to a number of persons assembled in his drawing-room; one
of these puts his hand in his pocket and gives him ten thousand francs,
and others subscribe on the spot to the amount of seventy-four thousand
francs.[5257] Cardinal Mathieu, during his administration, archbishop
of Besançon, thus collects and expends four millions. Lately, Cardinal
Lavigerie, to whom the budget allows fifteen thousand francs per
annum, wrote that he had spent eighteen hundred thousand francs and had
incurred no debt.[5258]--Through this initiative and this ascendancy the
bishop becomes a central social rallying-point; there is no other in
the provinces, nothing but so many disjointed lives, juxtaposed and kept
together in an artificial circle prescribed from above; so that a
good many of these, and of most consideration, gravitate to and group
themselves, especially since 1830, around this last permanent center and
form a part of its body; he is the sole germinating, vivifying, intact
center that still agglutinates scattered wills and suitably organizes
them. Naturally, class and party interests incorporate themselves
additionally along with the Catholic interest which he represents, and
his ecclesiastical authority becomes a political influence; besides
his secular and regular clergy, over and beyond the two thousand five
hundred exemplary or directorial lives which he controls, we see
behind him an indefinite multitude of lay adhesions and devotedness.
Consequently, every government must take him into their calculations,
and all the more because his colleagues stand by him; the episcopacy,
banded together, remains erect in face of the omnipotent State, under
the July monarchy as claimants of free instruction and under the second
empire in support of the temporal power of the Pope.--In this militant
attitude, the figure of the bishop is fully unveiled; the titular
champion of an infallible Church, himself a believer and submissive; his
voice is extraordinarily proud and defiant;[5259] in his own eyes, he
is the unique depository of truth and morality; in the eyes of his
followers, he becomes a superhuman personage, a prophet of salvation or
of destruction, the annunciator of divine judgments, the dispenser of
celestial anger or of celestial pardon; he rises to the clouds in an
apotheosis of glory; with women especially, this veneration grows into
enthusiasm and degenerates into idolatry. Towards the end of the second
empire an eminent French bishop, on a steamboat on Lake Leman, taking
a roll of bread from his pocket, seated himself alongside of two ladies
and ate it, handing each of them a piece of it. One of them, bowing
reverently, replied to him, "At your hands, my lord, this is almost the
holy communion!"[5260]




IV. The subordinate clergy.

     The subordinates.--The secular clergy.--Its derivation and
     how recruited.--How prepared and led.--The lower seminary.--
     The higher seminary.--Monthly lectures and annual retreat.--
     The Exercitia.--The Manreze du Prêtre.--The curé in his
     parish.--His rôle a difficult one.--His patience and correct
     conduct.

A clergy submissive in mind and feeling, long prepared by its condition
and education for faith and obedience, acts under the sway of this
sovereign and consecrated hand.[5261] Among the 40,000 curés and
desservans "more than 35,000 belong to the laboring class of workmen and
peasants,"[5262] not the first class of peasants, but the second class,
the poorer families earning their daily bread and often with a good many
children. Under the pressure of the ambient atmosphere and of the modern
régime, the others keep back their sons, retaining them for the world
and denying them to the Church; ambition, even low down on the scale,
has developed itself and changed its object. No longer do they aspire
for their sons to become a curé but a school master, a railroad
employee, or a commercial clerk.[5263] It was necessary to go descend
further, a lower stratum has to be attained, in order to extract from it
the priests that are lacking.

Undoubtedly, at this depth, the extraction was more expensive; the
family cannot afford to pay for the child's ecclesiastic cal education;
the State, moreover, after 1830, no longer gives anything to the lower
seminary, nor to the large one after 1885.[5264] The expenses of these
schools must be borne by the faithful in the shape of donations and
legacies; to this end, the bishop orders collections in the churches in
Lent and encourages his diocesans to found scholarships. The outlay for
the support and education, nearly gratis, of a future priest between
the ages of twelve and twenty-four is very great; in the lower seminary
alone it costs from forty to fifty thousand francs over and above the
net receipts;[5265] facing such an annual deficit, the bishop, who is
responsible for the undertaking, is greatly concerned and sometimes
extremely anxious. To make amends, and as compensation, the extraction
is surer; the long process by which a child is withdrawn and instructed
for the priesthood goes on and is finished with less uncertainty.
Neither the light nor the murmur of the century finds its way to these
low depths; nobody ever reads the newspaper, even the penny paper;
vocations can here shape themselves and become fixed like crystals,
intact and rigid, and all of a piece; they are better protected than in
the upper layers, less exposed to mundane infiltrations; they run less
risk of being disturbed or thwarted by curiosity, reason and skepticism,
by modern ideas; the outside world and family surroundings do not, as
elsewhere, interfere with their silent internal workings.[5266] When the
choir-boy comes home after the service, when the seminarian returns
to his parents in his vacations, he does not here en-counter so many
disintegrating influences, various kinds of information, free and easy
talk, comparisons between careers, concern about advancement, habits
of comfort, maternal solicitude, the shrugs of the shoulder and the
half-smile of the strong-minded neighbor. Stone upon stone and each
stone in its place, his faith builds up and becomes complete without
any incoherency in its structure, with no incongruity in the materials,
without any hidden imbalance. He has been taken in hand before his
twelfth year, when very young; his curé, who has been instructed from
above to secure suitable subjects, has singled him out in the catechism
class and again at the ceremony of confirmation;[5267] he is found to
have a pious tendency and a taste for sacred ceremonies, a suitable
demeanor, a mild disposition, complacency, and is inclined to study; he
is a docile and well-behaved child; whether an acolyte at the altar
or in the sacristy, he tries to fold the chasuble properly; all his
genuflexions are correct, they do not worry him, he has no trouble in
standing still, he is not excited and diverted, like the others, by the
eruptions of animal spirits and rustic coarseness. If his rude brain is
open to cultivation, if grammar and Latin can take root in it, the curé
or the vicar at once take charge of him; he studies under them, gratis
or nearly so, until he has completed the sixth or the seventh grade, and
then he enters the lower seminary.[5268]

This is a school apart, a boarding-house of picked youths, an enclosed
hot-house intended for the preservation and development of special
vocations. None of these schools existed previous to 1789; at the
present day(in 1885), they number 86 in France, and all the pupils
are to become future priests. No foreign plants, no future laymen, are
admitted into this preparatory nursery;[5269] for experience has
shown that if the lower seminary is mixed it no longer attains its
ecclesiastical purpose; "it habitually turns over to the upper
seminary only the bottom of the classes; those at the top seek fortune
elsewhere". But if, on the contrary, "the lower seminaries are kept
pure, the entire rhetoric[5270] class continues on into the upper
seminary; not only do they obtain the bottom of the classes but the
top."--The culture, in this second nursery, which is prolonged during
five years, becomes extreme, wholly special; it was less so under the
ancient régime, even at Saint-Sulpice; there were cracks in the glass
letting in currents of air; the archbishop's nephews and the younger
sons of nobles predestined for Church dignities had introduced into
it the laxity and liberties which were then the privileges of the
episcopacy. During the vacations,[5271] fairy scenes and pastorals were
performed there with costumes and dances, "The Enthronement of the Great
Mogul," and the "Shepherds in Chains"; the seminarians took great care
of their hair; a first-class hair-dresser came and waited on them; the
doors were not regularly shut: the youthful Talleyrand knew how to get
out into the city and begin or continue his gallantries.[5272] From
and after the Concordat, stricter discipline in the new seminaries had
become monastic; these are practical schools, not for knowledge, but for
training, the object being much less to make learned men than believing
priests; education takes precedence of instruction and intellectual
exercises are made subordinate to spiritual exercises[5273]--mass every
day and five visits to the Saint-Sacrament, with one minute to half-hour
prayer stations; rosaries of sixty-three paters and aves, litanies,
the angelus, loud and whispered prayers, special self-examinations,
meditation on the knees, edifying readings in common, silence until
one o'clock in the afternoon, silence at meals and the listening to an
edifying discourse, frequent communions, weekly confessions, general
confession at New-year's, one day of retreat at the end of every month
after the vacations and before the collation of each of the four orders,
eight days of retirement during which a suspension of all study, morning
and evening sermons, spiritual readings, meditations, orisons and other
services from hour to hour;[5274] in short, the daily and systematic
application of a wise and steadily perfected method, the most
serviceable for fortifying faith, exalting the imagination, giving
direction and impulse to the will, analogous to that of a military
school, Saint-Cyr or Saumur, to such an extent that its corporeal and
mental imprint is indelible, and that by the way in which he thinks,
talks, smiles, bows and stands in your presence we at once recognize a
former pupil of Saint-Sulpice as we do a former pupil of Saumur and of
Saint-Cyr. Thus graduated, an ordained and consecrated priest, first
a vicar and then a curé desservant, the discipline which has bound and
fashioned him still keeps him erect and presenting arms. Besides his
duties in church and his ministrations in the homes of his parishioners,
besides masses, vespers, sermons, catechisings, confessions, communions,
baptisms, marriages, extreme unctions, funerals, visiting the sick and
suffering, he has his personal and private exercises: at first, his
breviary, the reading of which demands each day an hour and a half, no
practical duty being so necessary. Lamennais obtained a dispensation
from it, and hence his lapses and fall.[5275] Let no one object that
such a recitation soon becomes mechanical[5276]; the prayers, phrases
and words which it buries deep in the mind, even wandering, necessarily
become fixed inhabitants in it, and hence occult and stirring powers
banded together which encompass the intellect and lay siege to the will,
which, in the subterranean regions of the soul, gradually extend or
fortify their silent occupation of the place, which insensibly operate
on the man without his being aware of it, and which, at critical
moments, unexpectedly rise up to steady his footsteps or to save him
from temptation. Add to this antique custom two modern institutions
which contribute to the same end. The first one is the monthly
conference, which brings together the desservans curés at the residence
of the oldest curé in the canton; each has prepared a study on some
theme furnished by the bishopric, some question of dogma, morality or
religious history, which he reads aloud and discusses with his brethren
under the presidency and direction of the oldest curé, who gives his
final decision; this keeps theoretical knowledge and ecclesiastical
erudition fresh in the minds of both reader and hearers. The other
institution, almost universal nowadays, is the annual retreat which the
priests in the diocese pass in the large seminary of the principal town.
The plan of it was traced by Saint Ignatius; his Exercitia is still
to-day the manual in use, the text of which is literally,[5277] or very
nearly, followed.[5278] The object is to reconstitute the supernatural
world in the soul, for, in general, it evaporates, becomes effaced, and
ceases to be palpable under the pressure of the natural world. Even the
faithful pay very little attention to it, while their vague conception
of it ends in becoming a mere verbal belief; it is essential to give
them back the positive sensation, the contact and feeling. To this
end, a man retires to a suitable place, where what he does actively or
passively is hourly determined for him in advance--attendance at chapel
or at preaching, telling his beads, litanies, orisons aloud, orisons in
his own breast, repeated self-examination, confession and the rest--in
short, an uninterrupted series of diversified and convergent ceremonies
which, by calculated degrees, drive out terrestrial preoccupations
and overcome him with spiritual impressions; immediately around him,
impressions of the same kind followed by the contagion of example,
mutual fervor, common expectation, involuntary emulation, and that
overstrained eagerness which creates its object; with all the more
certainty that the individual himself works on himself, in silence, five
hours a day, according to the prescriptions of a profound psychology, in
order that his bare conception may take upon itself body and substance.
What-ever may be the subject of his meditations, he repeats it twice the
same day, and each time he begins by "creating the scene," the Nativity
or the Passion, the Day of Judgment or Hell; he converts the remote and
undefined story, the dry, abstract dogma, into a detailed and figured
representation; he dwells on it, he evokes in turn the images furnished
by the five senses, visual, audible, tactile, olfactory, and even
gustatory; he groups them together, and in the evening he animates them
afresh in order that he may find them more intense when he awakes the
next morning. He thus obtains the complete, precise, almost physical
spectacle of his aspirations; he reaches the alibi, that mental
transposition, that reversal of the points of view in which the order
of certainties becomes inverted, in which substantial objects seem to
be vain phantoms and the mystic world a world of substantial
reality.[5279]--According to persons and circumstances, the theme for
meditation differs, and the retreat is prolonged for a shorter or longer
period. For laymen, it generally lasts for three days only; for the
Brethren of the Christian Schools it is eight days annually, and when,
at the age of twenty-eight, they take their vows in perpetuity, it lasts
thirty days: for the secular priests, it lasts a little less than a
week, while the theme on which their meditations are concentrated is the
supernatural character of the priest. The priest who is confessor and
ministrant of the Eucharist, the priest who is the savior and restorer,
the priest who is pastor, preacher and administrator--such are the
subjects on which their imagination, assisted and directed, must work
in order to compose the cordial which has to support them for the entire
year. None is more potent; that which the Puritans drank at an American
camp-meeting or at a Scotch revival was stronger but of less enduring
effect.[5280]

Two different cordials, one reinforcing the other, are mixed together in
this drink, both being of high flavor and so rank as to burn an ordinary
mouth. On the one hand, with the freedom of language and the boldness
of deduction characteristic of the method, the sentiment of the priest's
dignity is exalted. What is the priest?"He is, between God who is in
heaven and the man who tries to find him on earth, a being, God and
man, who brings these nearer by his symbolizing both.[5281].. I do not
flatter you with pious hyperboles in calling you gods; this is not
a rhetorical falsehood.... You are creators similar to Mary in her
cooperation in the Incarnation.... You are creators like God in time....
You are creators like God in eternity. Our creation on our part, our
daily creation, is nothing less than the Word made flesh itself.... God
may create other worlds, he cannot so order it that any act under the
sun can be greater than your sacrifice; for, at this moment, he reposes
in your hands all that he has and all that he is.... I am not a little
lower than the cherubim and seraphim in the government of the world,
I am far above them; they are only the Servants of God, we are his
coadjutors.... The angels, who behold the vast riches passing through
our hands daily, are amazed at our prerogative.... I fulfill three
sublime functions in relation to the god of our altars--I cause him
to descend, I administer his body, I am his custodian... . Jesus dwells
under your lock and key; his hours of reception begin and end through
you, he does not move without your permission, he gives no benediction
without your assistance, he bestows nothing except at your hands, and
his dependence is so dear to him that, for eighteen hundred years, he
has not left the Church for one moment to lose himself on the glory of
his Father."--On the other hand, they are made to drink in full
draughts the sentiment of subordination, which they imbibe to their very
marrow.[5282] "Ecclesiastical obedience is... a love of dependence, a
violation of judgment.... Would you know what it is as to the extent
of sacrifice? A voluntary death, the sepulcher of the will, says Saint
Climaque.... There is a sort of real presence infused into those
who command us...." Let us be careful not to fall "into the crafty
opposition of liberal Catholicism.... Liberalism, in its consequences,
is social atheism.... Unity, in Roman faith, is not sufficient; let us
labor together in the unity of the Roman spirit; for that, let us
always judge Rome with the optimism of affection.... Each new dogmatic
definition produces its own advantages: that of the Immaculate
Conception has given us Lourdes and its truly oecumenical wonders."

Nothing of all this is too much, and, in the face of the exigencies
of modern times, it scarcely suffices. Now that society has become
incredulous, indifferent or, at the least, secular, the priest must
possess the two intense and master ideas which support a soldier abroad
among insurgents or barbarians, one being the conviction that he is of
a species and essence apart, infinitely superior to the common herd;
and the other is the thought that he belongs to his flag, to his chiefs,
especially to the commanding general, and that he has given himself
up entirely to prompt obedience, to obeying every order issued without
question or doubt.[5283] Thus, in that parish where the permanent curé
was once installed, especially in the rural districts,[5284] the
legal and popular governor of all souls, his successor, the removable
desservant, is merely a resident bailiff, a sentry in his box, at the
opening of a road which the public at large no longer travel. From time
to time he hails you! But scarcely any one listens to him. Nine out of
ten men pass at a distance, along a newer, more convenient and broader
road. They either nod to him afar off or give him the go-by. Some are
even ill-disposed, watching him or denouncing him to the ecclesiastic or
lay authorities on which he depends. He is expected to make his orders
respected and yet not hated, to be zealous and yet not importunate, to
act and yet not efface himself: he succeeds pretty often, thanks to
the preparation just described, and, in his rural sentry-box, patient,
resigned, obeying his orders, he mounts guard lonely and in solitude, a
guard which, for the past fifteen years, (from 1870-1885) is disturbed
and anxious and becoming singularly difficult.


*****

[Footnote 5201: Artaud, "Histoire de Pie VII.", I., 167.]

[Footnote 5202: Comte d'Haussonville, "L'Église romaine et le premier
Empire, IV.,378, 415. (Instructions for the ecclesiastical commission of
1811.) "The Pope exercised the authority of universal bishop at the time
of the re-establishment of the cult in France.... The Pope, under the
warrant of an extraordinary and unique case in the Church, acted, after
the Concordat, as if he had absolute power over the bishops." (Speech by
Bigot de Préameneu, Minister of Worship, at the national council, June
20, 1811.) This act was almost universal in the history of the church,
and the court of Rome started from this sort of extraordinary act,
passed by it at the request of the sovereign, in order to enforce its
ideas of arbitrary rule over the bishops."]

[Footnote 5203: So stated by Napoleon.]

[Footnote 5204: Bossuet, "OEuvres complètes, XXXII.", 415. (Defensio
declarationis cleri gallicani, lib. VIII, caput 14).--"Episcopos, licet
papæ divino jure subditos, ejusdem esse ordinis, ejusdem caracteris,
sive, ut loquitur Hieronymus, ejusdem meriti, ejusdem, sacerdotii,
collegasque et coepiscopos appelari constat, scitumque illud Bernardi ad
Eugenium papam: Non es dominus episcoporum, sed unus ex illis."]

[Footnote 5205: Comte Boulay (de la Meurthe), "les Négociations du
Concordat," p. 35.--There were 50 vacancies in 135 dioceses, owing to
the death of their incumbents.]

[Footnote 5206: Bercastel and Henrion, XIII., 43. (Observations of Abbé
Emery on the Concordat.) "None of the past Popes, not even those who
have extended their authority the farthest, have been able to carry such
heavy, authoritative blows out, as those struck at this time by Pius
VII."]

[Footnote 5207: Prælectiones juris canonici habitæ in seminario Sancti
Sulpitii, 1867 (Par l'abbé Icard), I., 138. "Sancti canones passim
memorant distinctionem duplicis potestatis quâ utitur sanctus
pontifex: unam appelant ordinariam, aliam absolutam, vel plenitudinem
potestatis... . Pontifex potestate ordinaria utitur, quando juris
positivi dispositionem retinet.... Potestatem extraordinariam exserit,
quando jus humanum non servat, ut si jus ipsum auferat, si 1egibus
conciliorum deroget, privilegia acquisita immutet.... Plenitudo
potestatis nullis publici juris regulis est limitata."--Ibid., I, 333.]

[Footnote 5208: Principal Concordats: with Bavaria, 1817; with Prussia,
1821; with Wurtemburg, Baden, Nassau, the two Hesses, 1821; with
Hanover, 1824; with the Netherlands, 1827; with Russia, 1847; with
Austria, 1855; with Spain, 1851; with the two Sicilies, 1818; with
Tuscany, 1851; with Portugal (for the patronat of the Indies and of
China), 1857; with Costa Rica, 1852; Guatemala, 1853; Haiti, 1860;
Honduras 1861; Ecuador, Venezuela, Nicaragua and San Salvador, 1862.]

[Footnote 5209: Bercastel et Henrion, XIII, 524.]

[Footnote 5210: "Adstantibus non judicantibus."--One of the prelates
assembled at the Vatican, Nov. 20, 1854, observed that if the Pope
decided on the definition of the Immaculate Conception... this decision
would furnish a practical demonstration... of the infallibility with
which Jesus Christ had invested his vicar on earth." (Émile Ollivier,
"L'Église et l'État au concile du Vatican, I., 313.)]

[Footnote 5211: Bercastel et Henrion, XIII., 105. (Circular of Pius
VII., February 25, 1808.) "It is said that all cults should be free and
publicly exercised; but we have thrown this article out as opposed to
the canons and to the councils, to the catholic religion."--Ibid., (Pius
VII. to the Italian bishops on the French system, May 22, 1808.) "This
system of indifferentism, which supposes no religion, is that which
is most injurious and most opposed to the Catholic apostolic and Roman
religion, which, because it is divine, is necessarily sole and unique
and, on that very account, cannot ally itself with any other."--Cf. the
"Syllabus" and the encyclical letter "Quanta Cura"of December 8, 1864.]

[Footnote 5212: Sauzay, "Histoire de la persecution révolutionnaire dans
le departement du Doubs," X., 720-773. (List in detail of the entire
staff of the diocese of Besançon, in 1801 and in 1822, under Archbishop
Lecoz, a former assermenté.--During the Empire, and especially after
1806, this mixed clergy keeps refining itself. A large number, moreover,
of assermentés do not return to the Church. They are not disposed to
retract, and many of them enter into the new university. For example
("Vie du Cardinal Bonnechose," by M. Besson, I., 24), the principal
teachers in the Roman college in 1815-1816 were a former Capuchin, a
former Oratorian and three assermentés priests. One of these, M. Nicolas
Bignon, docteur ès lettres, professor of grammar in the year IV at the
Ecole Centrale, then professor of rhetoric at the Lycée and member of
the Roman Academy, "lived as a philosopher, not as a Christian and still
less as a priest." Naturally, he is dismissed in 1816. After that date,
the purging goes on increasing against all ecclesiastics suspected of
having compromised with the Revolution, either liberals or Jansenists.
Cf. the "Mémoires de l'abbé Babou, évêque nommé de Séez," on the
difficulties encountered by a too Gallican bishop and on the bitterness
towards him of the local aristocracy of his diocese.]

[Footnote 5213: Cf. the "Mémoires de l'abbé Babou, évêque nommé de
Séez," on the difficulties encountered by a too Gallican bishop and on
the bitterness towards him of the local aristocracy of his diocese.]

[Footnote 5214: "Mémorial," July 31, 1816.]

[Footnote 5215: Both systems, set forth with rare impartiality and
clearness, may be found in "L'Église et l'Etat au concile du Vatican,"
by Émile Ollivier, I., chs. II. and III.]

[Footnote 5216: Bercastel et Henrion, XIII., p. 14. (Letter of M.
d'Avian, archbishop of Bordeaux, October 28, 1815.) "A dozen consecutive
Popes do not cease, for more than one hundred and thirty years,
improving that famous Declaration of 1682."]

[Footnote 5217: Ernile Olliver, ibid., I. 315-319. (Declarations of
the French provincial councils and of foreign national and provincial
councils before 1870.)--Cf. M. de Montalembert, "Des Intérets
Catholiques," 1852, ch. II. and VI. "The ultramontane doctrine is the
only true one. The great Count de Maistre's ideas in his treatise on the
Pope have become commonplace for all Catholic youth."--Letter of Mgr.
Guibert, February 22, 1853. "Gallicanism no longer exists."--"Diary in
France," by Chris. Wordsworth, D.D., 1845. "There are not two bishops in
France who are not ultramontane, that is to say devoted to the interests
of the Roman See."]

[Footnote 5218: "Constitutio dogmatica prima de Ecclesia Christi,"
July 18, 1870. "Ejusmodi romani pontificis definitiones ex sese, non ex
consensu Ecclesiæ irreformabiles esse." (ch. IV.)]

[Footnote 5219: Ibid., ch. III. "Si quis dixerit romanum pontificem
habere tantummodo officium inspectionis vel directionis, non autem
plenam et supremam potestatem juridictionis in universam Ecclesiam,
non solum in rebus quæ ad fidem et mores, sed etiam in iis quæ ad
disciplinam et regimen Ecclesiæ per totum orbem diffusæ pertinent; aut
etiam habere tantum potiores partes, non vero totam plenitudinem hujus
supremæ potestatis, aut hanc ejus potestatem non esse ordinariam et
immediatam..."]

[Footnote 5220: Ibid., ch. III. "Aberrant a recto veritatis tramite
qui affirmant licere ab judiciis Romanorum pontificum ad oecumenicum
concilium, tanquam ad auctoritatem romano pontifice superiorem,
appellare."]

[Footnote 5221: "Almanach national de 1889." (Among these four, one only
belongs to a historic family, Mgr. de Deux-Brézé of Moulins.)]

[Footnote 5222: See "The Ancient Régime," pp. 65, 120, 150, 292. (Ed.
Laffont I. pp. 53-43, 92-93, 218,219.)]

[Footnote 5223: Cf. the history of the parliaments of Grenoble and
Rennes on the approach of the Revolution. Remark the fidelity of all
their judicial subordinates in 1788 and 1789, and the provincial power
of the league thus formed.]

[Footnote 5224: Article 12.]

[Footnote 5225: "The Revolution," Vol. I.--Abbé Sicard, "Les
Dispensateurs des bénéfices ecclésiastiques avant 1789."
("Correspondant" of Sep. 10, 1889, pp. 887, 892, 893.) Grosley,
"Mémoires pour servir l'histoire de Troyes," II, pp. 35, 45.]

[Footnote 5226: Abée Elie Méric, "Le Clergé sous l'ancien régime,"
I., p. 26. (Ten universities conferred letters of appointment on
their graduates.)--Abbé Sicard, "Les Dispensateurs," etc., p 876.--352
parliamentarians of Paris had an indult, that is to say, the right
of obliging collators and church patrons to bestow the first vacant
benefice either on himself or on one of his children, relations or
friends. Turgot gave his indult to his friend Abbé Morellet, who
consequently obtained (in June 1788) the priory of Thimer, with 16,000
livres revenue and a handsome house.--Ibid., p.887. "The bias of the
Pope, ecclesiastical or lay patrons, licensed parties, indultaires,
graduates, the so frequent use of resignations, permutations, pensions,
left to the bishop, who is now undisputed master of his diocesan
appointments, but very few situations to bestow."--Grosley, "Mémoires,
etc.," II., p.35. "The tithes followed collations. Nearly all our
ecclesiastical collators are at the same time large tithe-owners."]

[Footnote 5227: An inferior class of priests, generally assigned to poor
parishes.]

[Footnote 5228: Abbé Elie Méric, ibid., p.448.]

[Footnote 5229: Abbé Elie Méric, ibid., pp 392~403. (Details in
support.)]

[Footnote 5230: Abbé Richandeau, "De l'ancienne et de la nouvelle
discipline de l'Église en France," p. 281.--Cf. Abbé Elie Méric, ibid.,
ch. II. (On the justice and judges of the church.)]

[Footnote 5231: Mercur, "Tableau de Paris," IV.,chap. 345. "The flock no
longer recognize the brow of their pastor and regard him as nothing but
an opulent man, enjoying himself in the capital and giving himself very
little trouble about it."]

[Footnote 5232: "Le Monde" of Novem. 9, 1890. (Details, according to the
Montpellier newspapers, of the ceremony which had just taken place in
the cathedral of that town for the remission of the pallium to Mgr.
Roverié de Cabrières.]

[Footnote 5233: "Encyclopedie théologique," by Abbé Migne, ix., p.465.
(M. Emery, "Des Nouveaux chapitres cathédraux," p.238.) "The custom
in France at present, of common law, is that the bishops govern their
dioceses without the participation of any chapter. They simply call
to their council those they deem proper, and choose from these their
chapter and cathedral councillors."]

[Footnote 5234: Ibid., id.: "Notwithstanding these fine titles, the
members of the chapter take no part in the government during the life of
the bishop; all depends on this prelate, who can do everything himself,
or, if he needs assistants, he may take them outside of the chapter."
--Ibid., p. 445. Since 1802, in France, "the titular canons are
appointed by the bishop and afterwards by the government, which gives
them a salary. It is only the shadow of the canonical organization, of
which, however, they possess all the canonical rights."]

[Footnote 5235: Abbé André, "Exposition de quelques principes
fondamentaux de droit Canonique," p.187 (citing on this subject one
of the documents of Mgr. Sibour, then bishop of Digne).--"Since the
Concordat of 1801, the absence of all fixed procedure in the trial of
priests has left nothing for the accused to depend on but the conscience
and intelligence of the bishop. The bishop, accordingly, has been, in
law, as in fact, the sole pastor and judge of his clergy, and, except
in rare cases, no external limit has been put to the exercise of his
spiritual authority."]

[Footnote 5236: Émile Ollivier, "L'Église et l'État au concile du
Vatican," p 517.--Abbé André, ibid., PP.17, 19, 30, 280. (Various
instances, particularly the appeal of a rural curé, Feb. 8, 1866.) "The
metropolitan (bishop) first remarked that he could not bring himself to
condemn his suffragan." Next (Feb.20, 1866), judgment confirmed by
the metropolitan court, declaring "that no reason exists for declaring
exaggerated and open to reform the penalty of depriving the rector of
the parish of X--of his title, a title purely conferred by and revocable
at the will of the bishop."]

[Footnote 5237: Émile Ollivier, ibid., II.,517, 516.--Abbé André, ibid.,
p.241. "During the first half of the nineteenth century no appeal could
be had from the Church of France to Rome."]

[Footnote 5238: Émile Ollivier, ibid., I. p. 286.--Abbé André, ibid.,
p.242: "From 1803 to 1854 thirty-eight appeals under writ of error (were
presented) to the Council of State by priests accused.... Not one of the
thirty-eight appeals was admitted."]

[Footnote 5239: Prælectiones juris canonici habitæ in seminario Sancti
Sulpicii, III., p.146.]

[Footnote 5240: Émile Ollivier, ibid., I., 136.]

[Footnote 5241: Id., ibid., I., p. 285. (According to Abbé Denys,
"Études sur l'administration de l'Église," p. 211.)--Cf. Abbé André,
ibid., and "L'Etat actuel du clergé en France par les frères Allignol"
(1839).--This last work, written by two assistant-curés, well shows,
article by article, the effects of the Concordat and the enormous
distance which separates the clergy of to-day from the old clergy.
The modifications and additions which comport with this exposition are
indicated by Abbé Richandeau, director of the Blois Seminary, in his
book, "De l'ancienne et de la nouvelle discipline de l'Eglise en France"
(1842). Besides this, the above exposition, as well as what follows, is
derived from, in addition to printed documents, personal observations,
much oral information, and numerous manuscript letters.]

[Footnote 5242: "Manreze du prêtre," by the R. P. Caussette,
vicar-general of Toulouse, 1879., V. II.,p.523. (As stated by the
Abbé Dubois, an experienced missionary. He adds that these priests,
"transferred to difficult posts, are always on good terms with their
mayors,... triumph over obstacles, and maintain peace.")--Ibid., I.,
p.312. "I do not know whether the well-informed consciences of our
lords the bishops have made any mistakes, but what pardons have they not
granted! what scandals have they not suppressed! what reputations have
they not preserved! what a misfortune if you have to do with a court
instead of with a father! For the court acquits and does not pardon....
And your bishop may not only employ the mercy of forgiveness, but,
again, that of secrecy. How reap the advantages of this paternal system
by calumniating it!"]

[Footnote 5243: Vie de Mgr. Dupanloup," by Abbé Lagrange, II.,p.43:
"Mgr. Dupanloup believed that pastoral removal was very favorable, not
to say necessary, to the good administration of a diocese, to the proper
management of parishes, even to the honor of priests and the Church,
considering the difficulties of the times we live in. Irremovability
was instituted for fortunate times and countries in which the people
fulfilled all their duties and in which the sacerdotal ministry could
not be otherwise than a simple ministry of conservation; at the present
day it is a ministry of conquest and of apostleship. The bishop,
accordingly, must dispose of his priests as he thinks them fit for this
work, according to their zeal and to their possible success in a country
which has to be converted." Against the official character and publicity
of its judgments "it is important that it should not make out of a
misfortune which is reparable a scandal that nothing can repair."]

[Footnote 5244: "Moniteur," session of March 11, 1865.]

[Footnote 5245: In the following Taine describes the centralization
and improvement of the Church administration which probably made many
socialist readers believe that the same kind of improvements easily
could be introduced into private enterprise at the same time making them
more determined to exclude children from the old families from all kinds
of leadership in the coming socialist state.]

[Footnote 5246: "The Ancient Régime," pp. 65, 120, 150, 292. "Memoires
inédits de Madame de....." (I am not allowed to give the author's name).
The type in high relief of one of these prelates a few years before the
Revolution may here be found. He was bishop of Narbonne, with an income
of 800,000 livres derived from the possessions of the clergy. He passed
a fortnight every other year at Narbonne, and then for six weeks he
presided with ability and propriety over the provincial parliament at
Montpellier. But during the other twenty-two months he gave no thought
to any parliamentary business or to his diocese, and lived at Haute
Fontaine with his niece, Madame de Rothe, of whom he was the lover.
Madame de Dillon, his grand-niece, and the Prince de Guémenée, the
lover of Madame de Dillon, lived in the same château. The proprieties of
deportment were great enough, but language there was more than free, so
much so that the Marquise d'Osmond, on a visit, "was embarrassed even
to shedding tears.... On Sunday, out of respect to the character of
the master of the house, they went to Mass; but nobody carried a
prayer-book; it was always some gay and often scandalous book, which
was left lying about in the tribune of the château, open to those who
cleaned the room, for their edification as they pleased."]

[Footnote 5247: "Vie de Mgr. Dupanloup," by Abbé Lagrange.--"Histoire du
Cardinal Pie, évêque de Poitiers," by Mgr. Bannard.]

[Footnote 5248: One could imagine the impression this text would have
made on Lenin and his plans to create an elite communist party once he
should take the power he dreamt of. (SR.)]

[Footnote 5249: "Moniteur," session of March 14, 1865, speech of
Cardinal de Bonnechose: "I exact full obedience, because I myself, like
those among you who belong to the army or navy, have always taken pride
in thus rendering it to my chiefs, to my superiors."]

[Footnote 5250: "Histoire du cardinal Pie," by M. Bannard, II.,p.690. M.
Pie left six large volumes in which, for thirty years, he recorded his
episcopal acts, uninterruptedly, until his last illness.]

[Footnote 5251: Ibid., II., p.135: "In the year 1860 he had confirmed
11,586 belonging to his diocese; in 1861 he confirmed 11,845."--"Vie de
Mgr. Dupanloup," by Abbé La Grange, I II., p. 19. (Letter to his clergy,
1863.) He enumerates what he had done in his diocese: "The parochial
retraites which have amounted to nearly one hundred; the perpetual
adoration of the Holy Sacrament established in all the parishes;
confirmation, not alone in the cantonal town but in the smallest
villages and always preceded by the mission; the canonical visit made
annually in each parish, partly by the archdeacon, partly by the dean,
and partly by the bishop;... the vicarships doubled; life in common
established among the parochial clergy; sisters of charity for schools
and the sick multiplied in the diocese and spread on all sides;
augmentation of everything concerning ecclesiastical studies, the number
of small and large seminaries being largely increased; examinations of
young priests; ecclesiastical lectures; grades organized and raised;
churches and rectories everywhere rebuilt or 'repaired; a great diocesan
work in helping poor parishes and, to sustain it, the diocesan lottery
and fair of the ladies of Orleans; finally, retraites and communions for
men established, and also in other important towns and parishes of the
diocese." (P. 46.) (Letter of January 26, 1846, prescribing in each
parish the exact holding of the status animarum, which status is his
criterion for placing a curé.) "The État de Pâques in his parish must
always be known while he is in it, before withdrawing him and placing
him elsewhere."]

[Footnote 5252: The drafters of the charter of the United Nations Staff
Rules had the same idea in mind when writing Regulation 1.2: "Staff
members are subject to the authority of the Secretary-General and to
assignment by him to any of the activities or offices of the United
Nations. They are responsible to him in the exercise of their functions.
The whole time of staff members shall be at the disposal of the
Secretary-General. The Secretary-General shall establish a normal
working week." The disciplinary means of which the bishops disposed are,
however, lacking in the United Nations secretariat. (SR.)]

[Footnote 5253: "Moniteur," session of March 14 1865. (Speech of
Cardinal de Bonnechose.) "What would we do without our monks, Jesuits,
Dominicans, Carmelites, etc., to preach at Advent and during Lent,
and act as missionaries in the country? The (parochial) clergy is not
numerous enough to do this daily work."]

[Footnote 5254: Prælectiones juris canonici, II., 305 and following
pages.]

[Footnote 5255: "La Charité à Nancy," by Abbé Girard, 1890, I. vol.--"La
Charité à Angers," by Léon Cosnier, 1890, 2 vols.--"Manuel des
oeuvres et institutions charitable à Paris," by Lacour, I vol.--"Les
Congrégations religieuses en France," by Émile Keller, 1880, 1 vol,]

[Footnote 5256: "Vie de Mgr. Dupanloup," I., 506 (1853). "More than one
hundred free ecclesiastical establishments for secondary education have
been founded since the law of 1850."--"Statistique de l'enseignement
secondaire." In 1865, there were 276 free ecclesiastical schools for
secondary instruction with 34,897 pupils, of which 23.549 were boarders
and 11,348 day-scholars. In 1876, there were 390 with 46,816 pupils, of
which 33,092 were boarders and 13,724 day-scholars.]

[Footnote 5257: "La Charité à Nancy," by Abbé Girard, p.87.--"Vie du
Cardinal Mathieu," by Mgr. Besson, 2 vols.]

[Footnote 5258: December, 1890.]

[Footnote 5259: Cf., in the above-mentioned biographies, the public and
political discourses of the leading prelates, especially those of M.
Mathieu (of Besançon), M. Dupanloup (of Orleans), Mgr. de Bonnechose (of
Rouen), and particularly Mgr. Pie (of Poitiers).]

[Footnote 5260: A fact told me by a lady, an eye-witness. In the
seventeenth century it is probable that Fénelon or Bossuet would have
regarded such a response as extravagant and even sacrilegious.]

[Footnote 5261: Imagine the impression this might have had on ambitious
men dreaming of establishing their own faithful parties. (SR.)]

[Footnote 5262: Abbé Elie Méric, in the "Correspondant" of January 10,
1890, p. 18.]

[Footnote 5263: "De l'État actuel du clergé en France" (1839), p.248, by
the brothers Allignol. Careers of every kind are too crowded; "only the
ecclesiastical is in want of subjects; willing youths are the only
ones wanted and none are found." This is due, say these authors, to
the profession of assistant-priest being too gloomy--eight years of
preparatory study five years in the seminary, 800 francs of pay with the
risk of losing it any day, poor extras, a life-servitude, no retiring
pension, etc.--"Le Grand Péril de L'Église en France," by Abbé Bougaud
(4th ed., 1879), pp 2-23.--"Lettre Circulaire" (No. 53) of Mgr.
Thiebaut, archbishop of Rouen, 1890, p.618.]

[Footnote 5264: There is a gradual suppression of the subvention in 1877
and 1853 and a final one in 1885.]

[Footnote 5265: Abbé Bougaud, Ibid., p. 118, etc.--The lower seminary
contains about 200 or 250 pupils. Scarcely one of these pays full board.
They pay on the average from 100 to 200 frs. per head, while their
maintenance costs 400 francs.--The instructors who are priests get 600
francs a year. Those who are not priests get 300 francs, which adds
12,000 francs to the expenses and brings the total deficit up to 42,000
or 52,000 francs.]

[Footnote 5266: Somewhat like television where he who controls this
media controls the minds of the people. (SR.)]

[Footnote 5267: Circular letter (No. 53) of M. Léon, archbishop of Rouen
(1890), p. 618 and following pages.]

[Footnote 5268: Had Hitler and Lenin read this, which is likely, then
they would have fashioned their youth party programmes accordingly!! The
Catholic faith in France today (in 1999) is nearly extinguished with
only 14 seminaries and only a few hundred young men yearly entering
these.(SR.)]

[Footnote 5269: Abbé Bougaud, ibid., p. 135. (Opinion of the archbishop
of Aix, Ibid., p. 38.) "I know a lower seminary in which a class en
quatrième (8th grade US.) of 44 pupils furnished only 4 priests, 40
having dropped out on the way.... I have been informed that a large
college in Paris, conducted by priests and containing 400 pupils, turned
out in ten years but one of an ecclesiastical calling."--"Moniteur,"
March, 14, 1865. (Speech in the Senate by Cardinal Bonnechose.) "With
us, discipline begins at an early age, first in the lower seminary and
then in the upper seminary.... Other nations envy us our seminaries.
They have not succeeded in establishing any like them. They cannot
keep pupils so long; their pupils enter their seminaries only as day
scholars."]

[Footnote 5270: Old-fashioned name for the 11th grade in a French high
school. (SR.)]

[Footnote 5271: "Histoire de M. Emery," by Abbé Elie Méric, I., 15,
17. "From 1786 onwards, plays written by the 'les philosophes,' by the
'Robertuis' and the Laon community; they were excluded from the great
seminary where they ought never to have been admitted." This reform was
effected by the new director, M. Emery, and met with such opposition
that it almost cost him his life.]

[Footnote 5272: M. de Talleyrand, "Mémoires," vol. i. (Concerning one of
his gallantries.) "The superiors might have had some Suspicion,... but
Abbé couturier had shown them how to shut their eyes. He had taught them
not to reprove a young seminarist whom they believed destined to a high
position, who might become coadjutor at Rheims, perhaps a cardinal,
perhaps minister, minister de la feuille--who knows?"]

[Footnote 5273: "Diary in France," by Christopher Wordsworth, D.D. 1845.
(Weakness of the course of study at Saint-Sulpice.) "There is no regular
course of lectures on ecclesiastical history."--There is still at the
present day no special course of Greek for learning to read the
New Testament in the original.--"Le clergé français en 1890" (by an
anonymous ecclesiastic), pp.24-38. "High and substantial service is
lacking with us.... For a long time, the candidates for the episcopacy
are exempt by a papal bull from the title of doctor."--In the seminary
there are discussions in barbarous Latin, antiquated subjects, with
the spouting of disjointed bits of text: "They have not learned how
to think. .. Their science is good for nothing; they have no means or
methods even for learning.... The Testament of Christ is what they are
most ignorant of.... A priest who devotes himself to study is regarded
either as a pure speculator unfit for the government, or with an
ambition which nothing can satisfy, or again an odd, ill-humored,
ill-balanced person; we live under the empire of this stupid
prejudice,... We have archeologists, assyriologists, geologists,
philologists and other one-sided savants. The philosophers, theologians,
historians, and canonists have become rare."]

[Footnote 5274: "Journal d'un voyage en France," by Th. W. Allies,
1845, p.38. (Table of daily exercises in Saint-Sulpice furnished by Abbé
Caron, former secretary to the archbishop of Paris.)--Cf. in "Volupté,"
by Saint-Beuve, the same table furnished by Lacordaire.]

[Footnote 5275: "Manreze du prêtre," by the Rev. Father Caussette, I.,
82.]

[Footnote 5276: Ibid., I., 48. "Out of 360 meditations made by a priest
during the year, 300 of them are arid." We have the testimony of Abbé
d'Astros on the efficacy of prayers committed to memory, who was in
prison for three years under the first empire and without any books. "I
knew the psalms by heart and, thanks to this converse with God, which
escaped the jailor, I was never troubled by boredom."]

[Footnote 5277: As with the "Frères des Écoles Chrétiennes," whose
society has the most members.]

[Footnote 5278: "Manreze du prêtre," by the Rev. Father Caussette, I.,
9. The Manreze is the grotto where Saint Ignatius found the plan of
his Exercitia and the three ways by which a man succeeds in detaching
himself from the world, "the purgative, the illuminative and the
unitive." The author says that he has brought all to the second way,
as the most suitable for priests. He himself preached pastoral retreats
everywhere in France, his book being a collection of rules for retreats
of this kind.]

[Footnote 5279: Someone who, like me, have lived through the attempted
Communist conquest of the world, in Eastern Europe, in China, Korea,
Vietnam and other conquered territories, the terrible experiences of
those imprisoned in re-education camps, come to mind. Did Lenin have
Taine translated? Did Lenin and Stalin use this description of catholic
brainwashing as their model? We might never find out. (SR.)]

[Footnote 5280: One of these enduring effects is the intense faith of
the prelates, who in the 18th century believed so little. At the present
day, not made bishops until about fifty years of age, thirty of which
have been passed in exercises of this description, their piety has
taken the Roman, positive, practical turn which terminates in devotions
properly so called. M. Emery, the reformer of Saint-Sulpice, gave the
impulsion in this sense. ("Histoire de M. Emery," by Abbé Elie Méric, p.
115 etc.) M. Emery addressed the seminarians thus: "Do you think that,
if we pray to the Holy Virgin sixty times a day to aid us at the hour
of death, she will desert us at the last moment?"--" He led us into the
chapel, which he had decked with reliquaries.... He made the tour of it,
kissing in turn each reliquary with respect and love, and when he found
one of them out of reach for this homage, he said to us, 'Since we
cannot kiss that one, let us accord it our profoundest reverence!'...
And we all three kneeled before the reliquary."--Among other episcopal
lives, that of Cardinal Pie, bishop of Poitiers, presents the order of
devotion in high relief. ("Histoire du cardinal Pie," by M. Bannard,
II.,348 and passim.) There was a statuette of the Virgin on his bureau.
After his death, a quantity of paper scraps, in Latin or French, written
and placed there by him-were found, dedicating this or that action,
journey or undertaking under the special patronage of the Virgin or St.
Joseph. He also possessed a statuette of Our Lady of Lourdes which never
was out of his sight, day or night. "One day, having gone out of
his palace, he suddenly returned, having forgotten something--he had
neglected to kiss the feet of his Heavenly Mother."--Cf. "Vie de Mgr.
Dupanloup," Abbé Lagrange, I., 524. "During his mother's illness, he
multiplied the novenas, visited every altar, made vows, burnt candles,
for not only had he devotion, but devotions... On the 2d of January,
1849, there was fresh alarm; thereupon, a novena at Saint-Geneviève and
a vow--no longer the chaplet, but the rosary. Then, as the fête of Saint
François de Sales drew near a new novena to this great Savoyard saint;
prayers to the Virgin in Saint-Sulpice; to the faithful Virgin; to the
most wise Virgin, everywhere."]

[Footnote 5281: "Manreze du prêtre," I., 27, 29, 30, 31, 35, 91, 92,
244, 246, 247, 268.]

[Footnote 5282: Ibid. I., 279, 281, 301, 307, 308, 319.]

[Footnote 5283: Just like the believing faithful 20th century
international revolutionary Marxist-communist. (SR.)]

[Footnote 5284: "Le clergé française en 1890" (by an anonymous
ecclesiastic), p. 72. (On the smaller parishes.) "The task of the curé
here is thankless if he is zealous, too easy if he has no zeal. In any
event, he is an isolated man, with no resources whatever, tempted by all
the demons of solitude and inactivity."--Ibid.,,92. "Our authority among
the common classes as well as among thinking people is held in check;
the human mind is to-day fully emancipated and society secularized."--
Ibid., 15. "Indifference seems to have retired from the summits of the
nation only to descend to the lower strata.... In France, the priest is
the more liked the less he is seen; to efface himself, to disappear is
what is first and most often demanded of him. The clergy and the nation
live together side by side, scarcely in contact, through certain actions
in life, and never intermingling."]




CHAPTER III THE CLERGY




I. The regular clergy.

     The regular clergy.--Difference in the condition of the two
     clergies.--The three vows.--Rules.--Life in common.--Object
     of the system.--Violent suppression of the institution and
     its abuses in 1790.--Spontaneous revival of the institution
     free of its abuses after 1800.--Democratic and republican
     character of monastic constitutions.--Vegetation of the old
     stock and multiplication of new plants,--Number of monks and
     nuns.--Proportion of these numbers to the total population
     in 1789 and 1878.--Predominance of the organizations for
     labor and charity.--How formed and extended.--Social
     instinct and contact with the mystic world.

However correct the life of a secular priest may be, he stills belongs
to his century. Like a layman, he has his own domicile and fireside, his
parsonage in the country with a garden, or an apartment in town--in
any event, his own home and household, a servant or housekeeper, who is
often either his mother or a sister; in short, a suitable enclosure
set apart, where he can enjoy his domestic and private life free of the
encroachments on his public and ecclesiastical life, analogous to that
of a lay functionary or a bachelor of steady habits. In effect, his
expenses and income, his comforts and discomforts are about the same.
His condition, his salary,[5301] his table, clothes and furniture, his
out-of-door ways and habits, give him rank in the village alongside of
the schoolteacher and postmaster; in the large borough or small town,
alongside of the justice of the peace and college professor; in the
large towns, side by side with the head of a bureau or a chief of
division; at Paris, in certain parishes, alongside of the prefect of
police and the prefect of the Seine.[5302] Even in the humblest curacy,
he regulates his budget monthly, spending his money without consulting
anybody. When not on duty, his time is his own. He can dine out, order
for himself at home a special dish, allow himself delicacies. If he does
not possess every comfort, he has most of them, and thus, like a
lay functionary, he may if he chooses get ahead in the world, obtain
promotion to a better curacy, become irremovable, be appointed canon and
sometimes mount upward, very high, to the topmost rank. Society has a
hold on him through all these worldly purposes; he is too much mixed
up with it to detach himself from it entirely; very often his
spiritual life droops or proves abortive under so many terrestrial
preoccupations.--If the Christian desires to arrive at the alibi and
dwell in the life beyond, another system of existence is essential for
him, entailing a protection against two temptations, that is to say the
abandonment of two dangerous liberties, one consisting in the power
by which, being an owner of property, he disposes as he likes of what
belongs to him, and the other consisting in the power by which, being
master of his acts, he arranges as he pleases his daily occupations. To
this end, in addition to the vow of chastity also taken by the secular
priest, the members of religious orders also take two other distinct and
precise vows. By the vow of poverty he (or she) renounces all property
whatever, at least that which is fully and completely his own,[5303]
the arbitrary use of possessions, the enjoyment of what belongs to
him personally, which vow leads him to live like a poor man, to
endure privations, to labor, and beyond this, even to fasting, to
mortifications, to counteracting and deadening in himself all those
instincts by which man rebels against bodily suffering and aims at
physical well being. By the vow of obedience he (or she) gives himself
up entirely to a double authority: one, in writing, which is discipline,
and the other a living being, consisting of the superior whose business
it is to interpret, apply and enforce the rule. Except in unheard-of
cases, where the superior's injunctions might be expressly and directly
opposed to the letter of this rule,[5304] he interdicts himself from
examining, even in his own breast, the motives, propriety and occasion
of the act prescribed to him; he has alienated in advance future
determinations by entirely abandoning self-government; hence-forth,
his internal motor is outside of himself and in another person.
Consequently, the unforeseen and spontaneous initiative of free will
disappears in his conduct to give way to a predetermined, obligatory and
fixed command, to a system (cadre) which envelops him and binds together
in its rigid compartments the entire substance and details of his life,
anticipating the distribution of his time for a year, week by week, and
for every day, hour by hour, defining imperatively and circumstantially
all action or inaction, physical or mental, all work and all leisure,
silence and speech, prayers and readings, abstinences and meditations,
solitude and companionship, hours for rising and retiring, meals,
quantity and quality of food, attitudes, greetings, manners, tone and
forms of language and, still better, mute thoughts and the deepest
sentiments. Moreover, through the periodical repetition of the same acts
at the same hours, lie confines himself to a cycle of habits which are
forces, and which keep growing since they are ever turning the inward
balance on the same side through the ever-increasing weight of his
entire past. Through eating and lodging together, through a communion
of prayer, through incessant contact with other brethren of the same
religious observances, through the precaution taken to join with him one
companion when he goes out and two companions when he lodges elsewhere,
through his visits to and fro to the head establishment, he lives in a
circle of souls strained to the same extent, by the same processes,
to the same end as himself, and whose visible zeal maintains his
own.--Grace, in this state of things, abounds. Such is the term bestowed
on the silent and steady, or startling and brusque, emotion by which
the Christian enters into communication with the invisible world, an
aspiration and a hope, a presentiment and a divination, and even often a
distinct perception. Evidently, this grace is not far off, almost within
reach of the souls which, from the tenor of their whole life, strive
to attain it. They have closed themselves off on the earthly side,
therefore, these can no longer look or breathe otherwise than
heavenward.

At the end of the eighteenth century, the monastic institution no longer
produced this effect; deformed, weakened and discredited through
its abuses, especially in the convents of males, and then violently
overthrown by the Revolution, it seemed to be dead. But, at the
beginning of the nineteenth century, behold it springing up again
spontaneously, in one direct, new, strong and active jet and higher than
the old one, free of the excrescences, rottenness and parasites
which, under the ancient régime, disfigured and discolored it. No more
compulsory vows, no "frocked" younger sons "to make an elder," no girls
immured from infancy, kept in the convent throughout their youth, led
on, urged, and then driven into a corner and forced into the final
engagement on becoming of age; no more aristocratic institutions, no
Order of Malta and chapters of men or of women in which noble families
find careers and a receptacle for their supernumerary children. No more
of those false and counterfeit vocations the real motive of which was,
sometimes pride of race and the determination not to lose a social
standing, sometimes the animal attractions of physical comfort,
indolence and idleness. No more lazy and opulent monks, occupied,
like the Carthusians of Val Saint-Pierre, in overeating, stupefied
by digestion and routine, or, like the Bernardines of Granselve[5305]
turning their building into a worldly rendezvous for jovial hospitality
and themselves taking part, foremost in rank, in prolonged and
frequent parties, balls, plays and hunting-parties; in diversions and
gallantries which the annual fête of Saint Bernard, through a singular
dissonance, excited and consecrated. No more over-wealthy superiors,
usufructuaries of a vast abbatial revenue, suzerain and landlord
seigniors, with the train, luxury and customs of their condition,
with four-horse carriages, liveries, officials, antechamber, court,
chancellorship and ministers of justice, obliging their monks to address
them as "my lord," as lax as any ordinary layman, well fitted to cause
scandal in their order by their liberties and to set an example of
depravity. No more lay intrusions, commendatory abbés or priors,
interlopers, and imposed from above; no more legislative and
administrative interferences[5306] in order to bind monks and nuns
down to their vows, to disqualify them and deprive them almost of
citizenship, to exclude them from common rights, to withhold from them
rights of inheritance and testamentary rights, from receiving or making
donations, depriving them in advance of the means of subsistence, to
confine them by force in their convents and set the patrol on their
track, and, on trying to escape, to furnish their superior with secular
help and keep down insubordination by physical constraint. Nothing of
this subsists after the great destruction of 1790. Under the modern
régime, if any one enters and remains in a convent it is because the
convent is more agreeable to him than the world outside; there is no
other motive no pressure or hindrance of an inferior or different kind,
no direct or indirect, no domestic or legal constraint, no ambition,
vanity and innate or acquired indolence, no certainty of finding
satisfaction for a coarse and concentrated sensuality. That which now
operates is the awakened and persistent vocation; the man or the woman
who takes vows and keeps them, enters upon and adheres to his or her
engagement only through a spontaneous act deliberately and constantly
renewed through their own free will.

Thus purified, the monastic institution recovers its normal form, which
is the republican and democratic form, while the impracticable Utopia
which the philosophers of the eighteenth century wanted to impose on
lay society now becomes the effective régime under which the religious
communities are going to live. In all of them, the governors are elected
by the governed; whether the suffrage is universal or qualified, one
vote is as good as another; votes are counted by heads, and, at
stated intervals, the sovereign majority uses its right anew; with the
Carmelites, it is every three years and to elect by secret ballot, not
alone one authority but all the authorities, the prior, the sub-prior
and the three clavières.[5307]--Once elected, the chief, in conformity
with his mandate, remains a mandatory, that is to say a laborer assigned
a certain work, and not a privileged person enjoying a gratification.
His dignity is not a dispensation, but an additional burden; along with
the duties of his office, he subjects himself to an observance of the
rules--having become a general, he is no better off than the simple
soldier; he rises as early and his daily life is no better; his cell is
as bare and his personal support not more expensive. He who commands
ten thousand others lives as poorly, under the same strict instructions,
with as few conveniences and with less leisure than the meanest
brother.[5308] Over and above the austerities of ordinary discipline
this or that superior imposed on himself additional mortifications which
were so great as to astonish as well as edify his monks. Such is the
ideal State of the theorist, a Spartan republic, and for all, including
the chiefs, an equal ration of the same black broth. There is another
resemblance, still more profound. At the base of this republic lies
the corner-stone designed in anticipation by Rousseau, then hewn and
employed, well or ill, in the constitutions or plébiscites of the
Revolution, the Consulate and the Empire, to serve as the foundation of
the complete edifice. This stone is a primitive and solemn agreement by
all concerned, a social contract, a pact proposed by the legislator and
accepted by the citizens; except that, in the monastic pact, the will of
the acceptors is unanimous, earnest, serious, deliberate and permanent,
while, in the political pact, it is not so; thus, whilst the latter
contract is a theoretical fiction, the former is an actual verity.

For, in the small religious cité, all precautions are taken to have the
future citizen know for what and how far he engages himself. The copy of
the rules which is handed to him in advance explains to him the future
use of each day and of each hour, the detail in full of the régime to
which he is to subject himself. Besides this, to forestall any illusion
and haste on his part he is required to make trial of the confinement
and discipline; he realizes through personal, sensible and prolonged
experience what he must undergo; before assuming the habit, he must
serve a novitiate of at least one year and without interruption. Simple
vows sometimes precede the more solemn vows; with the Jesuits, several
novitiates, each lasting two or three years, overlie and succeed each
other. Elsewhere, the perpetual engagement is taken only after several
temporary engagements; up to the age of twenty-five the "Fréres des
Ecoles Chrétiennes" take their vows for a year; at twenty-five for three
years; only at twenty-eight do they take them for life. Certainly,
after such trials, the postulant is fully informed; nevertheless, his
superiors contribute what they know. They have watched him day after
day; deep down under his superficial, actual and declared disposition
they define his profound, latent, and future intention; if they deem
this insufficient or doubtful, they adjourn or prevent the final
profession: "My child, wait-your vocation is not yet determined," or "My
friend, you were not made for the convent, return to the world!"--Never
was a social contract signed more knowingly, after greater reflection
on what choice to make, after such deliberate study: the conditions of
human association demanded by the revolutionary theory are all fulfilled
and the dream of the Jacobins is realized. But not where they planned
it: through a strange contrast, and which seems ironical in history,
this day-dream of speculative reason has produced nothing in the lay
order of things but elaborate plans on paper, a deceptive and dangerous
Declaration of (human) Rights, appeals to insurrection or to a
dictatorship: incoherent or still-born organizations, in short,
abortions or monsters; in the religious order of things, it adds to the
living world thousands of living creatures of indefinite viability. So
that, among the effects of the French revolution, one of the principal
and most enduring is the restoration of monastic institutions....

From the Consulate down to the present day they can everywhere be seen
sprouting and growing. Early, new sprouts shoot out and cover the old
trunks of which the revolutionary axe had cut off the branches. In 1800,
"the re-establishment of a corporation shocked current ideas."[5309] But
the able administrators of the Consulate required volunteer women for
service in their hospitals. In Paris, Chaptal, the minister, comes
across a lady superior whom he formerly knew and enjoins her to gather
together ten or a dozen of her surviving companions; he installs them in
the rue Vieux-Colombier, in a building belonging to the hospitals, and
which he furnishes for forty novices; at Lyons, he notices that the
"Sisters" of the general hospital were obliged, that they might perform
their duties, to wear a lay dress; he authorizes them to resume their
costume and their crosses; he allows them two thousand francs to
purchase necessaries, and, when they have donned their old uniform, he
presents them to the First Consul. Such is the first sprout, very small
and very feeble, that appears in the institution of Saint-Vincent
de Paule at Paris and in that of Saint-Charles at Lyons. In our
days[5310](around 1885), the congregation of Saint-Charles, besides
the parent-house at Lyons, has 102 others with 2,226 nuns, and the
congregation of Saint-Vincent de Paule, besides the parent-house at
Paris, has 88 others with 9,130 nuns. Often, the new vegetation on the
trunk amputated by the Revolution is much richer than on the old one;
in 1789, the institution of the "Fréres des Ecoles Chrétiennes" had
800 members; in 1845, there were 4,000; in 1878, 9,818; on the 31st of
December, 1888, there were 12,245. In 1789, it counted 126 houses; in
1888, there were 1,286.--Meanwhile, alongside of the old plantations, a
large number of independent germs, new species and varieties, spring up
spontaneously, each with its own aim, rules and special denomination.
On Good Friday, April 6, 1792, at the very date of the decree of the
Legislative Assembly abolishing all religious communities,[5311] one is
born, that of the "Soeurs de la Retraite Chrétienne," at Fontenelle, and,
from year to year, similar plants constantly and suddenly spring out of
the ground for a century. The list is too long to be counted; a large
official volume of more than four hundred pages is filled with the
mere statement of their names, localities and statistics.--This volume,
published in 1878, divides religious institutions into two groups. We
find in the first one, comprising the legally authorized societies, at
first 5 congregations of men possessing 224 establishments with 2,418
members, and 23 associations of men with 20,341 members and supplying
3,086 schools; next, 259 congregations of women and 644 communities
which possess 3,196 establishments, supplying 16,478 schools and
counting 113,750 members. In the second group, comprising unauthorized
societies, we find 384 establishments of men with 7,444 members, and 602
establishments of women with 14,003 members,--in all, in both groups,
30,287 brethren and 127,753 sisters. Considering the total population,
the proportion of brethren in 1789 and in our day is about the same;
it is their spirit which has changed; at the present day, all desire to
remain in their profession, while in 1789 two-thirds wanted to withdraw
from it. As to the proportion of Sisters, it has increased beyond all
calculation.[5312] Out of 10,000 women in the population, there were, in
1789, 28 Sisters; in 1866, 45; in 1878, 67.[5313]

Carmelites, Clarisses, Filles du Coeur de Jésus, Réparatrices, Soeurs du
Saint-Sacrament, Visitandines, Franciscaines, Benedictines and others
like these, about 4000 nuns or sisters, are contemplatists. The
Carthusians, Cistercians, Trappists, and some others, about 1800 monks
and brethren who, for the most part, till the ground, do not impose
labor on themselves other than as an accessory exercise; their first and
principal object is prayer, meditation and worship; they, too, devote
their lives to contemplation on the other world and not to the service
of this one. But all the others, more than 28,000 men and more than
123,000 women, are benefactors by institution and voluntary laborers,
choosing to devote themselves to dangerous, revolting, and at least
ungrateful services--missions among savages and barbarians, care of the
sick, of idiots, of the insane, of the infirm, of the incurable, the
support of poor old men or of abandoned children; countless charitable
and educational works, primary schools, orphan asylums, houses of refuge
and prisons, and all gratuitously or at the lowest wages through a
reduction of bodily necessities to the lowest point, and of the personal
expenditure of each brother or sister.[5314] Evidently, with these
men and with these women, the ordinary balance of motives which prompt
people is reversed; in the inward balance of the scale it is no longer
selfishness which prevails against altruism, but the love of others
which prevails against selfishness.--Let us look at one of their
institutions just at the moment of its formation and see how the
preponderance passes over from the egoistic to the social instinct.
The first thing we always find at the origin of the enterprise is
compassion; a few kind hearts have been moved at the aspect of misery,
degradation and misconduct; souls or bodies were in distress and there
was danger of shipwreck; three or four saviors have come to the rescue.
At Rouen, in 1818, it is a poor girl who, by advice of her curé, brings
together a few of her friends in her garret; during the day they study
in a class and at night they work for their living; today, under the
title of "Soeurs du Sacré-Coeur de Jésus," they number 800. Elsewhere, at
Laval, the founder of the House of Refuge for poor repentants is a
plain ironing-girl who began her "House" by charitably harboring two
prostitutes; these brought others, and there are now a hundred of
similar institutions. Most frequently, the founder is the desservant or
vicar of the place, who, moved by local misery, fancies at first that
he is doing only local work. Thus, there is born in 1806 at
Rouissé-sur-Loire the congregation of "La Providence," which now has 918
"Sisters," in 193 houses; in 1817, at Lovallat, the association of "Les
Petits-Frères de Marie," which numbers to-day 3600 brethren; in 1840,
at Saint-Servan, the institution of "Les Petites-Soeurs des Pauvres," who
now number 2685, and, with no other help but alms-giving, feed and care
for, in their 158 houses, 20,000 old men, of which 13,000 live in their
93 domiciles in France; they take their meals after the inmates, and eat
only what they leave; they are prohibited from accepting any endowment
whatever; by virtue of their rules they are and remain mendicants, at
first, and especially, in behalf of their old men, and afterwards and
as accessory, in their own behalf. Note the circumstances of the
undertaking and the condition of the founders--they were two village
work-women, young girls between sixteen and eighteen for whom the vicar
of the parish had written short regulations (une petite règle); on
Sunday, together in the cleft of a rock on the seaside, they studied
and meditated over this little summary manual, performed the prescribed
devotions, this or that prayer or orison at certain hours, saying their
beads, the station in the church, self-examination and other ceremonies
of which the daily repetition deposits and strengthens the supernatural
mental conception. Such, over and above natural pity, is the superadded
weight which fixes the unstable will and maintains the soul permanently
in a state of abnegation.--At Paris, in the two halls of the Prefecture
of Police, where prostitutes and female thieves remain for a day or two
in provisional confinement, the "Sisters" of "Marie-Joseph," obliged by
their vows to live constantly in this sewer always full of human dregs,
sometimes feel their heart failing them; fortunately, a little chapel is
arranged for them in one corner where they retire to pray, and in a few
minutes they return with their store of courage and gentleness again
revived.--Father Etienne, superior of the "Lazarists" and of the
"Filles de Saint-Vincent de Paule," with the authority of long
experience, very justly observed to some foreign visitors,[5315] "I have
given you the details of our life, but I have not told you the secret
of it. This secret, here it is--it is Jesus Christ, known, loved, and
served in the Eucharist."




II. Evolution of the Catholic Church.

     The mystic faculty.--Its sources and works.--Evangelical
     Christianity.--Its moral object and social effect.--Roman
     Christianity.--Development of the Christian idea in the
     West.--Influence of the Roman language and law.--Roman
     conception of the State.--Roman conception of the Church.

In the thirteenth century, to the communicant on his knees about
to receive the sacrament, the Host often faded out of sight; it
disappeared, and, in its place, appeared an infant or the radiant
features of the Savior and, according to the Church doctors, this was
not an illusion but an illumination.[5316] The veil had lifted, and the
soul found itself face to face with its object, Jesus Christ present in
Eucharist. This was second sight, infinitely superior in certainty and
reach to the former, a direct, full view granted by grace from above,
a supernatural view.--By this example, which is an extreme case, we
comprehend in what faith consists. It is an extraordinary faculty
operating alongside of and often in conjunction with our natural
faculties; over and above things as our observation naturally presents
them to us, it reveals to us a beyond, a majestic, grandiose world, the
only one truly real and of which ours is but the temporary veil. In the
depths of the soul, much below the superficial crust of which we have
any conscience,[5317] impressions have accumulated like subterranean
waters. There, under the surging heat of innate instincts, a living
spring has burst forth, growing and bubbling in the obscurity; let a
shock or a fissure intervene and it suddenly sprouts up and forces its
way above the surface; the man who has this within him and in whom it
overflows is amazed at the inundation and no longer recognizes himself;
the visible field of his conscience is completely changed and renewed;
in place of his former and vacillating and scattered thoughts he finds
an irresistible and coherent belief, a precise conception, and intense
picture, a passionate affirmation, sometimes even positive perceptions
of a species apart and which come to him not from without but from
within, not alone mere mental suggestions, like the dialogues of
the "Imitation" and the "intellectual locutions" of the mystics, but
veritable physical sensations like the details of the visions of Saint
Theresa, the articulate voices of Joan of Arc and the bodily stigmata of
Saint Francis.

In the first century, this beyond discovered by the mystic faculty was
the kingdom of God, opposed to the kingdoms of this world;[5318] these
kingdoms, in the eyes of those who revealed them, were worthless;
through the keen insight of the moral and social instinct, these large,
generous and simple hearts had divined the internal defect of all the
societies or States of the century. Egoism in these was too great;
there was in them a lack of charity,[5319] the faculty of loving another
equally with one's self, and thus of loving, not only a few, but all
men, whoever they might be, simply because they were men, and especially
the meek, the humble and the poor; in other words, the voluntary
repression of the appetites by which the individual makes of himself a
center and subordinates other lives to himself, the renunciation of "the
lusts of the flesh, of the eyes and of vanity, the insolence of wealth
and luxury, of force and of power."[5320]--Opposed to and in contrast
with this human order of things, the idea of a divine order of things
was born and developed itself--a Heavenly Father, his reign in heaven,
and very soon, perhaps on the morrow, his reign here below; his son
descending to the earth to establish his reign and dying on the cross
for the salvation of men; after him, his Spirits, sent by him, the
inward breath which animates his disciples and continues his work; all
men brethren and beloved children of the same common father; here and
there spontaneous groups who have learned "these good tidings"
and propagated them; small scattered communities which live in the
expectation of an ideal order of things and yet, by anticipation,
realizing it from this time forth; "All[5321] were of one heart and one
soul,... for as many as were possessors of lands or houses sold them,
and brought the prices of the things that were sold and laid them
down at the apostles' feet: and distribution was made unto every man
according as he had need," all happy in being together, in mutual love
and in feeling themselves regenerate or pure.

Here is to be found in the soul a new regulator and motor, and moreover
a powerful organ, appropriate and effective, obtained through internal
recasting and metamorphosis, like the wings with which an insect is
provided after its transformation. In every living organism, necessity,
through tentative effort and selections, thus produces the possible and
requisite organ. In India, five hundred years before our era, it was
Buddhism; in Arabia, six hundred years after our era, it was Islam;
in our western societies it is Christianity. At the present day, after
eighteen centuries on both continents, from the Ural to the Rocky
Mountains, amongst Russian moujiks and American settlers, it works as
formerly with the fishermen of Galilee and in the same way, in such a
way as to substitute for the love of self the love of others; neither
in substance nor in use has any change taken place; under its Greek,
Catholic or Protestant envelope, it is still, for four hundred millions
of human beings, the spiritual means, the great, indispensable pair
of wings by which man rises upward above himself, above his groveling
existence and his limited horizons, leading him on through patience,
hope and resignation to serenity, and beyond to temperance, purity,
goodness, and self-devotion and self-sacrifice. Always and everywhere,
for the past eighteen hundred years, as soon as these wings grow feeble
or give way, public and private morals degenerate. In Italy, during
the Renaissance, in England under the restoration, in France under the
Convention and Directory, man becomes as pagan as in the first century;
the same causes render him the same as in the times of Augustus and
Tiberius, that is to say voluptuous and cruel: he abuses himself and
victimizes others; a brutal, calculating egoism resumes its ascendancy,
depravity and sensuality spread, and society becomes a den of
cut-throats and a brothel.[5322]

After contemplating this spectacle near by, we can value the
contribution to modern societies of Christianity, how much modesty,
gentleness and humanity it has introduced into them, how it maintains
integrity, good faith and justice. Neither philosophic reason, artistic
or literary culture, or even feudal, military or chivalric honor, nor
any administration or government can replace it. There is nothing else
to restrain our natal bent, nothing to arrest the insensible, steady,
down-hill course of our species with the whole of its original burden,
ever retrograding towards the abyss. Whatever its present envelope may
be, the old Gospel still serves as the best auxiliary of the social
instinct.

Among its three contemporary forms, that which groups together the most
men, about 180 millions of believers, is Catholicism, in other words,
Roman Christianity, which two words, comprising a definition, contain
a history. At the origin, on the birth of the Christian principle, it
expressed itself at first in Hebrew, the language of prophets and
of seers; afterwards, and very soon, in Greek, the language of the
dialecticians and philosophers; at last, and very late, in Latin, the
language of the jurisconsults and statesmen; then come the successive
stages of dogma. All the evangelical and apostolic texts, written in
Greek, all the metaphysical speculations,[5323] also in Greek, which
served as commentary on these, reached the western Latins only
through translations. Now, in metaphysics, Latin poorly translates the
Greek[5324]; it lacks both the terms and the ideas; what the Orient
says, the Occident only half comprehends; it accepts this without
dispute and confidently holds it as truth.[5325] At length in its turn,
in the fourth century, when, after Theodosius, the Occident breaks loose
from the Orient, it intervenes, and it intervenes with its language,
that is to say with the provision of ideas and words which its culture
provided; it likewise had its instruments of precision, not those of
Plato and Aristotle, but others, as special, forged by Ulpian, Gaius
and twenty generations of jurists through the original invention and
immemorial labor of Roman genius. "To say what is law," to impose rules
of conduct on men, is, in abridged form, the entire practical work of
the Roman people; to write this law out, to formulate and coordinate
these rules, is, in abridged form, its entire scientific work, and
with the Romans in the third, fourth and fifth centuries, during the
decadence of other studies, the science of law was still in full
force and vigor.[5326] Hence, when the Occidentals undertook the
interpretation of texts and the elaboration of the Creed it was with
the habits and faculties of jurisconsults, with the preoccupations and
mental reservations of statesmen, with the mental and verbal instruments
which they found suitable. In those days, the Greek doctors, in conflict
with the monophysites and monothelites, brought out the theory of
the divine essence; at the same date, the Latin doctors, opposing the
Pelagians, Semi-Pelagians and Donatists, founded the theory of human
obligation.[5327] Obligation, said the Roman jurists, is a lien of law"
by which we are held to doing or suffering something to free us from
indebtedness. Out of this juridical conception, which is a masterpiece
of Roman jurisprudence, issued, as with a bud full of sap, the new
development of the Creed.--On the one hand, we are obligated towards
God, for, in relation to him, we are, in legal terms, insolvent debtors,
heirs of an infinite debt, incapable of paying it and of satisfying
our creditor except through the interpostion of a superhuman third
person[5328] who assumes our indebtedness as his own; still more
precisely, we are delinquents, guilty from birth and by inheritance,
condemned en masse and then pardoned en masse, but in such a way that
this pardon, a pure favor, not warranted by any merit of our own, always
remains continual and revocable at will; that, for a few only, it is
or becomes plenary and lasting, that no one amongst us can be sure of
obtaining it, and that its award, determined beforehand on high, forever
remains for us a State secret. Hence the prolonged controversies
on Predestination, Free-will and Original Sin, and the profound
investigations on man before, during and after the Fall. Hence, also,
the accepted solutions, not very conclusive and, if one pleases,
contradictory, but practical, average and well calculated for
maintaining mankind in faith and obedience, under the ecclesiastical and
dogmatic government which, alone, is authorized to lead man on in the
way of salvation.

On the other hand, we are obligated to the Church, for she is a cité,
the city of God, and, following the Roman definition, the cité is not an
abstract term, a collective term, but a real, positive existence,
"the commonwealth" (chose publique), that is to say a distinct entity
consisting of generations which succeed each other in it, of infinite
duration and of a superior kind, divine or nearly so, which does not
belong to individuals but to which they belong, an organized body, with
special form and structure, based on traditions, constituted by laws and
ruled by a government. The absolute authority of the community over its
members and the despotic leadership of the community by its chiefs--such
is the Roman notion of the State and, for much stronger reasons, of
the Church. She, thus, is a militant, conquering, governing Rome,
predestined to universal empire, a legitimate sovereign like the other
one, but with a better title, for she derives hers from God. It is God
who, from the beginning, has preconceived and prepared her, who has
bodied her forth in the Old Testament and announced her through the
prophets; it is the Son of God who has built her up, who, to all
eternity, will never fail to maintain and guide her steps, who, through
his constant inspiration, ever remains present in her and active through
her. He has committed to her his revelation. She alone, expressly
delegated by Christ, possesses second sight, the knowledge of the
invisible, the comprehension of the ideal order of things as its Founder
prescribed and instituted, and hence, accordingly, the custodianship
and interpretation of the Scriptures, the right of framing dogmas and
injunctions, of teaching and commanding, of reigning over souls and
intellects, of fashioning belief and morals. Henceforth, the mystic
faculty is to be confined within dikes. At bottom, this is the faculty
for conceiving of the ideal, to obtain a vision of it, to have faith in
this vision and to act upon it; the more precious it is the greater the
necessity of its being under control. To preserve it from itself, to
put it on guard against the arbitrariness and diversity of individual
opinions, to prevent unrestrained digression, theoretically or
practically, either on the side of laxity or of rigor, requires a
government.--That this is a legacy of ancient Rome the Catholic Church
does not dispute. She styles herself the Roman Church. She still writes
and prays in Latin. Rome is always her capital; the title of her chief
is that which formerly designated the head of the pagan cult; after 1378
all the Popes except five, and since 1523 all, have been Italians; at
the present day, thirty-five out of sixty-four cardinals are likewise
Italians. The Roman stamp becomes still more evident on comparing the
millions of Christians who are Catholics with the millions of Christians
who are not. Among the primitive annexations and ulterior acquisitions
of the Roman Church, several have separated from her, those of the
countries whose Greek, Slavic and Germanic populations never spoke Latin
and whose language is not derived from the Latin. Poland and Ireland
are alone, or nearly so, the only countries which have remained loyal,
because, with these, the Catholic faith, under the long pressure of
public calamities, has become incorporated with national sentiment.
Elsewhere the Roman deposit is non-existent or too thin. On the
contrary, all the populations that were once Latinized have at bottom
remained Catholic; four centuries of imperial rule and of Roman
assimilation have deposited in them of layers of habits, ideas and
sentiments which endure.[5329] To measure the influence of this historic
layer it is sufficient to note that three elements compose it, all three
contemporary, of the same origin and of the same thickness, a Roman
language, the civil law of Rome, and Roman Christianity; each of these
elements, through its consistence, indicates the consistence of the
others.

Hence the profound and established characteristics by which the Catholic
branch now distinguishes itself from the other two issuing from the same
Christian trunk. With the Protestants, the Bible, which is the Word
of God, is the sole spiritual authority; all the others, the Doctors,
Fathers, tradition, Popes and Councils, are human and, accordingly,
fallible; in fact, these have repeatedly and gravely erred.[5330] The
Bible, however, is a text which each reader reads with his own eyes,
more or less enlightened and sensitive, with eyes which, in Luther's
time, possessed the light and sensibility of the sixteenth century, and
which, at the present time, read with the sensibility and light of
the nineteenth century; so that, according to epochs and groups, the
interpretation may vary, while authority, if not as regards the text, or
at least its meaning, belongs wholly to the individual. With the Greeks
and Slavs, as with the Catholics, it belongs only to the Church, that is
to say to the heads of the Church, the successors of the apostles.
But with the Greeks and Slavs, since the ninth century, the Church had
decreed no new dogmas; according to her, revelation had stopped; the
creed was finished, final and complete, and there was nothing to do but
to maintain it.--On the contrary, with the Catholics, after as before
that date, the creed never ceased developing itself, always becoming
more precise, and revelation kept on; the last thirteen councils were
inspired like the first seven, while the first one, in which Saint Peter
at Jerusalem figured, enjoyed no more prerogatives than the last
one convoked by Pius IX. at the Vatican. The Church is not "a frozen
corpse,"[5331] but a living body, led by an always active brain which
pursues its work not only in this world but likewise in the next world,
at first to define it and next to describe it and assign places in
it; only yesterday she added two articles of faith to the creed, the
immaculate conception of the Virgin and the infallibility of the Pope;
she conferred ultra-terrestrial titles; she declared Saint Joseph patron
of the universal Church; she canonized Saint Labre; she elevated Saint
François de Sales to the rank of Doctor. But she is as conservative as
she is active. She retracts nothing of her past, never rescinding any
of her ancient decrees; only, with the explanations, commentaries and
deductions of the jurist, she fastens these links closer together, forms
an uninterrupted chain of them extending from the present time back to
the New Testament and, beyond, through the Old Testament, to the origins
of the world, in such a way as to coordinate around herself the entire
universe and all history. Revelations and prescriptions, the doctrine
thus built up is a colossal work, as comprehensive as it is precise,
analogous to the Digest but much more vast; for, besides canon law and
moral theology, she includes dogmatic theology, that is to say, besides
the theory of the visible world, the theory of the invisible world
and its three regions, the geography of Hell, Purgatory and Paradise,
immense territories of which our earth is merely the vestibule, unknown
territories inaccessible to sense and reason, but whose confines,
entrances, issues and subdivisions, the inhabitants and all that
concerns them, their faculties and their communications, are defined, as
on Peutinger's map and in the Notitia imperii romani, with extraordinary
clearness, minutia and exactitude, through a combination of the
positive spirit and the mystic spirit and by theologians who are at once
Christians and administrators. In this relation, examine the "Somme"
of Saint Thomas. Still at the present day his order, the Dominican,
furnishes at Rome those who are consulted on matters of dogma; or
rather, in order to abridge and transcribe scholastic formula into
perceptible images, read the "Divine Comedy "by Dante.[5332] It is
probable that this description, as far as imagination goes, is still
to-day the most exact as well as most highly-colored presentation of
the human and divine world as the Catholic Church conceives it. She has
charge of its keys and reigns and governs in it. The prestige of such
a government over multitudes of minds and souls, susceptible to
discipline, without personal initiative, and in need of firm and
systematic guidance, is supreme. It is equal to or superior to that of
the ancient roman State with its 120 million subjects. Outside of
the Empire all seemed to these souls anarchy or barbarism; the same
impression exists with the Catholics in relation to their Church.
Whether spiritual or temporal, an authority is more likely to be
approved and venerated when, always visible and everywhere present, it
is neither arbitrary nor capricious, but orderly, restrained by texts,
traditions, legislation and jurisprudence, derived from above and from
a superhuman source, consecrated by antiquity and by the continuity,
coherence and grandeur of its work, in short, by that character which
the Latin tongue is alone capable of expressing and which it terms
majesty.

Among the acts which religious authority prescribes to its subjects,
there are some which it imposes in its own name--rites, outward
ceremonies and other observances--of which the principal ones, in the
Catholic catechism, form a sequence to the "commandments of God,"
and which are entitled the "commandments of the Church."--With the
Protestants, where Church authority is almost gone, rites have almost
disappeared; considered in themselves, they have ceased to be regarded
as obligatory or meritorious; the most important ones, the Eucharist
itself, have been retained only as commemorative or as symbolic; the
rest, fasts, abstinences, pilgrimages, the worship of saints and the
Virgin, relics of the cross, words committed to memory, genuflections
and kneeling before images or altars, have been pronounced vain; in the
way of positive injunctions none remain but the reading of the Bible,
while duty in outward demonstration of piety is reduced to piety
within, to the moral virtues, to truthfulness, probity, temperance and
steadfastness, to the energetic determination to observe the watchword
received by man in two forms and which he finds in two concordant
examples, in the Scriptures as interpreted by his conscience, and in his
conscience as enlightened by the Scriptures. As another consequence,
the Protestant priest has ceased to be a delegate from on high, the
indispensable mediator between man and God, alone qualified to give
absolution and to administer the rites by which salvation is obtained;
he is simply a man, graver, more learned, more pious and more exemplary
than other men, but, like the others, married, father of a family and
entering into civil life, in short a semi-layman. The laymen whom
he leads owe him deference, not obedience; he issues no orders; he
sentences nobody; speaking from the rostrum to a gathering is his
principal, almost unique, office, and the sole purpose of this is
instruction or an exhortation.--With the Greeks and Slaves, with whom
the authority of the Church is merely of a preservative nature, all
the observances of the twelfth century have subsisted, as rigorously in
Russia as in Asia Minor or in Greece, although fasting and Lents, which
Southern stomachs can put up with, are unhealthy for the temperaments
of the North. Here, likewise, these observances have assumed capital
importance. The active sap, withdrawn from theology and the clergy,
flows nowhere else; these, in an almost paralyzed religion, constitute
almost the sole vivifying organ, as vigorous and often more so,
than ecclesiastical authority; in the seventeenth century, under the
patriarch Nicon, thousands of "old believers," on account of slight
rectifications of the liturgy, the alteration of a letter in the Russian
translation of the name of Jesus, and the sign of the cross made by
three instead of two fingers, separated themselves and, to-day, these
dissenters, multiplied by their sects, count by millions. Defined by
custom, every rite is sacred, immutable, and, when exactly fulfilled,
sufficient in itself and efficacious; the priest who utters the words
and makes the motions is only one piece in the mechanism, one of
the instruments requisite for a magic incantation; after his
instrumentation, he falls back into his human negativity; he is nothing
more than an employee paid for his ministration. And this ministration
is not exalted in him by an extraordinary and visible renunciation,
by perpetual celibacy, by continence promised and kept; he is
married,[5333] father of a family, needy, obliged to shear his flock to
support himself and those belonging to him, and therefore is of little
consideration; he is without moral ascendancy; he is not the pastor who
is obeyed, but the official who is made use of.

The role of the priest in the Catholic Church is quite different.
Through her theory of rites she confers on him incomparable dignity
and real personal power.--According to this theory, observances and
ceremonies possess intrinsic and peculiar virtue; undoubtedly, these
require some mental base, which is found in earnest piety; but
earnest piety independent of these is not enough; it lacks its final
consequence, its praiseworthy completion or "satisfaction,"[5334] the
positive act by which we atone for our sins to God and demonstrate our
obedience to the Church.[5335] It is the Church, the living interpreter
of God's will, which prescribes these rites; she is then the mistress of
these and not the servant; she is empowered to adapt their details and
forms to necessities and circumstances, to lighten or simplify them
according to time and place, to establish the communion in one shape, to
substitute the Host in place of bread, to lessen the number and rigor of
the ancient Lents, to determine the effects of diverse pious works, to
apply, ascribe and transfer their salutary effects, to assign proper
value and reward to each devotional act, to measure the merit derived
from them, the sins they efface and the pardons these obtain not only in
this world but in the next one. By virtue of her administrative habits,
and with the precision of a bookkeeper, she casts up her accounts
of indulgences and notes on the margin the conditions for obtaining
them,--a certain prayer repeated so many times on certain days and
what for, so many days less in the great penitentiary into which every
Christian, however pious, is almost sure to get on dying, this or that
diminution of the penalty incurred, and the faculty, if the penitent
rejects this deduction for himself, of bestowing the benefit on another.
By virtue of her authoritative habits and the better to affirm her
sovereignty, she regards as capital sins the omission of the rites
and ceremonies she commands,--"not going to mass on Sunday or on
fête-days;[5336] eating meat on Friday or Saturday unnecessarily;" not
confessing and communing at Easter, a mortal sin which "deprives one of
the grace of God and merits eternal punishment" as well as "to slay
and to steal something of value." For all these crimes, unforgivable in
themselves, there is but one pardon, the absolution given by the
priest, that is to say, confession beforehand, itself being one of the
observances to which we are bound by strict obligation and at the very
least once a year.

Through this office the Catholic priest rises above human conditions to
an immeasurable height; for, in the confessional, he exercises
supreme power, that which God is to exercise at the Last Judgment,
the formidable power of punishing or remitting sins, of judgment or
of absolution, and, if he intervenes on the death-bed, the faculty of
consigning the impenitent or repentant soul to an eternity of rewards
or to an eternity of damnation.[5337] No creature, terrestrial or
celestial, not even the highest of archangels, or St. Joseph or the
Virgin,[5338] possesses this veritably divine prerogative. He alone
holds it through exclusive delegation, by virtue of a special sacrament,
the order which assigns to him the privilege of conferring five others,
and which endows him for life with a character apart, ineffaceable and
supernatural.--To render himself worthy of it, he has taken a vow of
chastity, he undertakes to root out from his flesh and his heart the
consequences of sex; he debars himself from marriage and paternity;
through isolation, he escapes all family influences, curiosities and
indiscretions; he belongs wholly to his office. He has prepared himself
for it long beforehand, he has studied moral theology together with
casuistry and become a criminal jurist; and his sentence is not a vague
pardon bestowed on penitents after having admitted in general terms that
they are sinners. He is bound to weigh the gravity of their errors and
the strength of their repentance, to know the facts and details of
the fall and the number of relapses, the aggravating or extenuating
circumstances, and, therefore, to interrogate in order to sound the soul
to its depths. If some souls are timorous, they surrender themselves to
him spontaneously and, more than this, they have recourse to him outside
of his tribunal; he marks out for them the path they must follow, he
guides them at every turn; he interferes daily, he becomes a director as
was said in the seventeenth century, the titular and permanent director
of one or of many lives.[5339] This is still the case at the present
day, and especially for women and for all nuns; the central conception
around which all Roman ideas turn, the conception of the imperium and
of government, has here found its perfect accomplishment and attained to
its final outermost limits.

There are now of these spiritual governors about 180,000, installed in
the five regions of the world, each assigned to the leadership of about
1000 souls and as special guardian of a distinct flock, all ordained by
bishops instituted by the Pope, he being absolute monarch and declared
such by the latest council. In the new Rome as in the ancient Rome,
authority has gradually become concentrated until it has centered in
and is entrusted wholly to the hands of one man. Romulus, the Alban
shepherd, was succeeded by Cæsar Augustus, Constantine or Theodosius,
whose official title was "Your Eternal," "Your Divine," and who
pronounced their decrees "immutable oracles." Peter, the fisherman of
Galilee, was succeeded by infallible pontiffs whose official title is
"Your Holiness," and whose decrees, for every Catholic, are "immutable
oracles" in fact as in law, not hyperbolically, but in the full sense
of the words expressed by exact terms. The imperial institution has thus
formed itself anew; it has simply transferred itself from one domain
to another; only, in passing from the temporal order of things to the
spiritual order, it has become firmer and stronger, for it has guarded
against two defects which weakened its antique model.--One the one hand,
it has provided for the transmission of supreme power; in old Rome, they
did not know how to regulate this; hence, when an interregnum occurred,
the many violent competitors, the fierce conflicts, the brutalities,
all the usurpations of force, all the calamities of anarchy. In Catholic
Rome, the election of the sovereign pontiff belongs definitively to a
college of prelates[5340] who vote according to established formalities;
these elect the new pope by a majority of two-thirds, and, for more than
four centuries, not one of these elections has been contested; between
each defunct pope and his elected successor, the transfer of universal
obedience has been prompt and unhesitating and, during as after the
interregnum, no schism in the Church has occurred.--On the other hand,
in the legal title of Cæsar Augustus there was a defect. According to
Roman law, he was only the representative of the people; the community
had delegated all its rights incorporate to him; but in it alone was
omnipotence vested. According to canon law, omnipotence was vested
solely in God; it is not the Catholic community which possesses this and
delegates it to the Pope;[5341] his rights accrue to him from another
and higher source.[5342] He is not the elect of the people, but the
interpreter, vicar and representative of Jesus Christ.




III. The Church today.

     Existing Catholicism and its distinctive traits.--Authority,
     its prestige and supports.--Rites, the priest, the Pope.
     --The Catholic Church and the modern State.--Difficulties in
     France born out of their respective constitutions.--

Such is the Catholic Church of to-day, a State constructed after the
type of the old Roman empire, independent and autonomous, monarchical
and centralized, with a domain not of territory but of souls and
therefore international, under an absolute and cosmopolite sovereign
whose subjects are simultaneously subjects of other non-religious
rulers. Hence, for the Catholic Church a situation apart in every
country, more difficult than for Greek, Slavic or Protestant churches;
these difficulties vary in each country according to the character of
the State and with the form which the Catholic Church has received in
them.[5343] In France, since the Concordat, these difficulties are of
greater gravity than elsewhere.

When, in 1802, the Church initially received her French form, this was
a complete systematic organization, after a general and regular plan,
according to which she formed only one compartment of the whole.
Napoleon, by his Concordat, organic articles and ulterior decrees,
in conformity with the ideas of the century and the principles of the
Constituent Assembly, desired to render the clergy of all kinds,
and especially the Catholic clergy, one of the subdivisions of his
administrative staff, a corps of functionaries, mere agents assigned
to religious interests as formerly to civil matters and therefore
manageable and revocable. This they all were, in fact, including the
bishops, since they at once tendered their resignations at his
order. Still, at the present day all, except the bishops, are in
this situation, having lost the ownership of their places and the
independence of their lives, through the maintenance of the consular and
imperial institutions, through removal, through the destruction of
the canonical and civil guarantees which formerly protected the
lower clergy, through the suppression of the officialité; through the
reduction of chapters to the state of vague shadows, through the rupture
or laxity of the local and moral tie which once attached every member of
the clergy to a piece of land, to an organized body, to a territory, to
a flock, and through the lack of ecclesiastical endowment, through the
reduction of every ecclesiastic, even a dignitary, to the humble and
precarious condition of a salaried dependent.[5344]

A régime of this kind institutes in the body subject to it an almost
universal dependence, and hence entire submission, passive obedience,
and the stooping, prostrate attitude of the individual no longer able to
stand upright on his own feet.[5345] The clergy to which it is applied
cannot fail to be managed from above, which is the case with this
one, through its bishops, the Pope's lieutenant-generals, who give the
countersign to all of them. Once instituted by the Pope, each bishop
is the governor for life of a French province and all-powerful in
his circumscription we have seen to what height his moral and social
authority has risen, how he has exercised his command, how he has kept
his clergy under discipline and available, in what class of society he
has found his recruits, through what drill and what enthusiasm every
priest, including himself, is now a practiced soldier and kept in check;
how this army of occupation, distributed in 90 regiments and composed
of 50,000 resident priests, is completed by special bodies of troops
subject to still stricter discipline, by monastic corporations, by four
or five thousand religious institutions, nearly all of them given to
labor and benevolence; how, to the subordination and correct deportment
of the secular clergy is added the enthusiasm and zeal of the regular
clergy, the entire devotion, the wonderful self-denial of 30,000 monks
and of 120,000 nuns; how this vast body, animated by one spirit,
marches steadily along with all its lay supporters towards one end. This
purpose, forever the same, is the maintenance of its dominion over all
the souls that it has won over, and the conquest of all the souls over
which it has not yet established its domination.

Nothing could be more antipathetic to the French State. Built up like
the Church, after the Roman model, it is likewise authoritative and
absorbent. In the eyes of Napoleon, all these priests appointed or
sanctioned by him, who have sworn allegiance to him, whom he pays
annually or quarterly, belong to him in a double sense, first under the
title of subjects, and next under the title of clerks. His successors
are still inclined to regard them in the same light; in their hands the
State is ever what he made it, that is to say a monopolizer, convinced
that its rights are illimitable and that its interference everywhere
is legitimate, accustomed to governing all it can and leaving to
individuals only the smallest portion of themselves, hostile to all
bodies that might interpose between them and it, distrustful and
ill-disposed towards all groups capable of collective action and
spontaneous initiation, especially as concerns proprietary bodies.
A self-constituted daily overseer, a legal guardian, a perpetual and
minute director of moral societies as of local societies, usurper of
their domains, undertaker or regulator of education and of charitable
enterprises, the State is ever in inevitable conflict with the Church.
The latter, of all moral societies, is the most active; she does not let
herself be enslaved like the others, her soul is in her own keeping;
her faith, her organization, her hierarchy and her code are all her own.
Against the rights of the State based on human reason, she claims rights
founded on divine revelation, and, in self-defense, she justly finds
in the French clergy, as the State organized it in 1802, the best
disciplined militia, the best classified, the most capable of operating
together under one countersign and of marching in military fashion under
the impulsion that its ecclesiastical leaders choose to give it.

Elsewhere, the conflict is less permanent and less sharp the two
conditions which aggravate it and maintain it in France are, one or
both, wanting. In other European countries, the Church has not the
French form imposed upon it and the difficulties are less; in the
United States of America, not only has it not undergone the French
transformation, but the State, liberal in principle, interdicts
itself against interventions like those of the French State and the
difficulties are almost null. Evidently, if there was any desire to
attenuate or to prevent the conflict it would be through the first
or the last of these two policies. The French State, however,
institutionally and traditionally, always invasive, is ever tempted to
take the contrary course.[5346]--At one time, as during the last years
of the Restoration and the first years of the second Empire, it allies
itself with the Church; each power helps the other in its domination,
and in concert together they undertake to control the en tire man.
In this case, the two centralizations, one ecclesiastic and the other
secular, both increasing and prodigiously augmented for a century,
work together to overpower the individual. He is watched, followed up,
seized, handled severely, and constrained even in his innermost being;
he can no longer breathe the atmosphere around him; we can well remember
the oppression which, after 1823 and after 1852, bore down on every
independent character and on every free intellect.--At another time, as
under the first and the third Republic, the State sees in the Church a
rival and an adversary; consequently, it persecutes or worries it and we
of to-day see with our own eyes how a governing minority, steadily,
for a long time, gives offence to a governed majority where it is
most sensitive; how it breaks up congregations of men and drives free
citizens from their homes whose only fault is a desire to live, pray
and labor in common; how it expels nuns and monks from hospitals and
schools, with what detriment to the hospital and to the sick, to the
school and to the children, and against what unwillingness and what
discontent on the part of physicians and fathers of families, and at
what bungling waste of public money, at what a gratuitous overburdening
of taxation already too great.




IV. Contrasting Vistas.

     Other difficulties of the French system.--New and scientific
     conception of the world.--How opposed to the Catholic
     conception.--How it is propagated.--How the other is
     defended.--Losses and gains of the Catholic Church.--Its
     narrow and broad domains.--Effects of Catholic and French
     systems on Christian sentiment in France.--Increased among
     the clergy and diminished in society.

Other disadvantages of the French system are still worse.--In (the
nineteenth) century, an extraordinary event occurs. Already about
the middle of the preceding century, the discoveries of scientists,
coordinated by the philosophers, had afforded the sketch in full of
a great picture, still in course of execution and advancing towards
completion, a picture of the physical and moral universe. In this sketch
the point of sight was fixed, the perspective designed, the various
distances marked out, the principal groups drawn, and its outlines were
so correct that those who have since continued the work have little
to add but to give precision to these and fill them up.[5347] In their
hands, from Herschel and Laplace, from Volta, Cuvier, Ampère, Fresnel
and Faraday to Darwin and Pasteur, Burnouf, Mommsen and Renan, the
blanks on the canvas have been covered, the relief of the figures shown
and new features added in the sense of the old ones, thus completing it
without changing in any sense the expression of the whole, but, on the
contrary, in such a way as to consolidate, strengthen and perfect the
master-conception which, purposely or not, had imposed itself on the
original painters, all, predecessors and successors, working from
nature and constantly inviting a comparison between the painting and
the model.--And, for one hundred years, this picture, so interesting, so
magnificent, and the accuracy of which is so well guaranteed, instead
of being kept private and seen only by select visitors, as in the
eighteenth century, is publicly exposed and daily contemplated by an
ever-increasing crowd. Through the practical application of the same
scientific discoveries, owing to increased facilities for travel and
intercommunication, to abundance of information, to the multitude
and cheapness of books and newspapers, to the diffusion of primary
instruction, the number of visitors has increased enormously.[5348] Not
only has curiosity been aroused among the workmen in towns, but also
with the peasants formerly plodding along in the routine of their daily
labor, confined to their circle of six leagues in circumference. This or
that small daily journal treats of divine and human things for a million
of subscribers and probably for three millions of readers.--Of
course, out of a hundred visitors, ninety of them are not capable of
comprehending the sense of the picture; they give it only a cursory
glance; moreover, their eyes are not properly educated for it, and they
are unable to grasp masses and seize proportions. Their attention is
generally arrested by a detail which they interpret in a wrong way, and
the mental image they carry away is merely a fragment or a caricature;
basically, if they have come to see a magisterial work, it is most of
all due to vanity and so that his spectacle, which some of them enjoy,
should not remain the privileged of a few. Nevertheless, however
imperfect and confused their impressions, however false and ill-founded
their judgments, they have learned something important and one true idea
of their visit remains with them: of the various pictures of the world
not one is painted by the imagination but from nature.[5349]

Now, between this picture and that which the Catholic Church presents
to them, the difference is enormous. Even with rude intellects, or minds
otherwise occupied, if the dissimilarity is not clearly perceived it
is vaguely felt; in default of scientific notions, the simple hearsay
caught on the wing, and which seem to have flickered through the mind
like a flash of light over a hard rock, still subsists there in a latent
state, amalgamating and agglutinating into a solid block until at
length they form a massive, refractory sentiment utterly opposed to
faith.--With the Protestant, the opposition is neither extreme nor
definitive. His faith, which the Scriptures give him for his guidance,
leads him to read the Scriptures in the original text and, hence, to
read with profit, to call to his aid whatever verifies and explains an
ancient text, linguistics, philology, criticism, psychology, combined
with general and particular history; thus does faith lay hold on science
as an auxiliary. According to diverse souls, the role of the auxiliary
is more or less ample it may accordingly adapt itself to the faculties
and needs of each soul, and hence extend itself indefinitely, and
already do we see ahead the time when the two collaborators, enlightened
faith and respectful science, will together paint the same picture, or
each separately paint the same picture twice in two different frames.--
With the Slavs and Greeks, faith, like the Church and the rite, is a
national thing; creed forms one body with the country, and there is less
disposition to dispute it; besides, it is not irksome; it is simply a
hereditary relic, a domestic memorial, a family icon, a summary product
of an exhausted art no longer well understood and which has ceased
to produce. It is rather sketched out than completed, not one feature
having been added to it since the tenth century; for eight hundred years
this picture has remained in one of the back chambers of the memory,
covered with cobwebs as ancient as itself, badly lighted and rarely
visited; everybody knows that it is there and it is spoken of with
veneration; nobody would like to get rid of it, but it is not daily
before the eyes so that it may be compared with the scientific
picture.--Just the reverse with the Catholic picture. Each century, for
eight hundred years, has applied the brush to this picture; still, at
the present time we see it grow under our eyes, acquiring a stronger
relief, deeper color, a more vigorous harmony, an ever more fixed and
striking expression.--To the articles of belief which constitute the
creed for the Greek and Slavic church, thirteen subsequent Catholic
councils have added to it many others, while the two principal dogmas
decreed by the last two councils, Transubstantiation by the council of
Trent and the Infallibility of the Pope by that of the Vatican, are just
those the best calculated to hinder forever any reconciliation between
science and faith.

Thus, for Catholic nations, the dissimilarity, instead of diminishing,
is aggravated; both pictures, one painted by faith and the other
by science, become more and more dissimilar, while the profound
contradiction inherent in the two conceptions becomes glaring through
their very development, each developing itself apart and both in
a counter-sense, one through dogmatic verdicts and through the
strengthening of discipline and the other by ever-increasing discoveries
and by useful applications, each adding daily to its authority, one by
precious inventions and the other by good works, each being recognized
for what it is, one as the leading instructor of positive truths and the
other as the leading instructor of sound morality. That is why we find a
combat in each Catholic breast as to which of the two concepts is to
be accepted as guide. To every sincere mind and to one capable of
entertaining both, each is irreducible to the other. To the vulgar mind,
unable to combine both in thought, they exist side by side and clash
with each other only occasionally when action demands a choice.
Many intelligent, cultivated people, and even savants, especially
specialists, avoid confronting them, one being the support of their
reason and the other the guardian of their conscience; between them, in
order to prevent any possible conflict, they interpose in advance a wall
of separation, a compartment partition,[5350]" which prevents them from
meeting and clashing. Others, at length, clever or not too clear-sighted
politicians, try to force their agreement, either by assigning to each
its domain and in prohibiting mutual access, or by uniting both domains
through the semblance of bridges, by imitation stairways, and other
illusory communications which the phantasmagoria of human eloquence can
always establish between incompatible things and which procure for man,
if not the acquisition of a truth, at least a pleasure in the play
of words. The ascendancy of the Catholic faith over these uncertain,
inconsequent, tormented souls is more or less weak or strong according
to time, place, circumstance, individuals and groups; in the larger
group it has diminished, while it has increased in the smaller one.

The latter comprises the regular and secular clergy with its approximate
recruits and its small body of supporters; never was it so exemplary and
so fervent; the monastic institution in particular never flourished so
spontaneously and more usefully. Nowhere in Europe are more missionaries
formed, so many "brethren" for small schools, so many volunteers, male
and female, in the service of the poor, the sick, the infirm and of
children, such vast communities of women freely devoting their lives to
teaching and to charity.[5351] Life in common, under uniform and strict
rules, to a people like the French, more capable than any other of
enthusiasm and of emulation, of generosity and of discipline, naturally
prone to equality, sociable and predisposed to fraternity through the
need of companionship, sober, moreover, and laborious, a life in common
is no more distasteful in the convent than in the barracks, nor in
an ecclesiastical army more than in a lay army, while France, always
Gallic, affords as ready a hold nowadays to the Roman system as in the
time of Augustus. When this system obtains a hold on a soul it keeps
its hold, and the belief it imposes becomes the principal guest, the
sovereign occupant of the intellect. Faith, in this occupied territory,
no longer allows her title to be questioned; she condemns doubt as a
sin, she interdicts investigation as a temptation, she presents the
peril of un belief as a mortal danger, she enrolls conscience in her
service against any possible revolt of reason. At the same time that she
guards herself against attacks, she strengthens her possession; to
this end, the rites she prescribes are efficient, and their efficiency,
multiplicity and convergence--confession and communion, retreats,
spiritual exercises, abstinences, and ceremonies of every kind, the
worship of saints and of the Virgin, of relics and images, orisons on
the lips and from the heart, faithful attendance on the services and the
exact fulfillment of daily duties--all attest it.

Through its latest acquisitions and the turn it now takes, Catholic
faith buries itself in and penetrates down to the very depths of
the sensitive and tried souls which it has preserved from foreign
influences; for it supplies to this chosen flock the aliment it most
needs and which it loves the best. Below the metaphysical, abstract
Trinity, of which two of the three persons are out of reach of the
imagination, she has set up an historical Trinity whose personages are
all perceptible to the senses, Mary, Joseph and Jesus. The Virgin, since
the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, has risen to an extraordinary
height; her spouse accompanies her in her exaltation;[5352] between them
stands their son, child or man, which forms the Holy Family.[5353] No
worship is more natural and more engaging to chaste celibates in whose
brain a pure, vague vision is always present, the reverie of a family
constituted without the intervention of sex. No system of worship
furnishes so many precise objects for adoration, all the acts and
occurrences, the emotions and thoughts of three adorable lives from
birth to death and in the beyond, down to the present day. Most of
the religious institutions founded within the past eighty years devote
themselves to meditation on one of these lives considered at some one
point of incident or of character, either purity, charity, compassion
or justice, conception, nativity or infancy, presence in the Temple,
at Nazareth, at Bethany, or on Calvary, the passion, the agony, the
assumption or apparition under this or that circumstance or place, and
the rest. There are now in France, under the name and patronage of Saint
Joseph alone, one hundred and seventeen congregations and communities
of women. Among so many appellations, consisting of special watchwords
designating and summing up the particular preferences of a devout
group, one name is significant there are seventy-nine congregations or
communities of women which have devoted themselves to the heart of Mary
or of Jesus or to both together.[5354] In this way, besides the narrow
devotion which is attached to the corporeal emblem, a tender piety
pursues and attains its supreme end, the mute converse of the soul, not
with the dim Infinite, the indifferent Almighty who acts through general
laws, but with a person, a divine person clothed with the vesture of
humanity and who has not discarded it, who has lived, suffered and
loved, who still loves, who, in glory above, welcomes there the
effusions of his faithful souls and who returns love for love.

All this is incomprehensible, bizarre or even repulsive to the public at
large, and still more so to the vulgar. It sees in religion only what
is very plain, a government; and in France, it has already had enough of
government temporally; add a complementary one on the spiritual side and
that will be more and too much. Alongside of the tax-collector and the
gendarme in uniform, the peasant, the workman and the common citizen
encounter the curé in his cassock who, in the name of the Church,
as with the other two in the name of the State, gives him orders and
subjects him to rules and regulations. Now every rule is annoying and
the latter more than the others; one is rid of the tax-collector after
paying the tax, and of the gendarme when no act is committed against the
law; the curé is much more exacting; he interferes in domestic life and
in private matters and assumes to govern man entirely. He admonishes his
parishioners in the confessional and from the pulpit, he lords it over
them even in their inmost being, and his injunctions bind them in every
act, even at home, around the fireside, at table and in bed, comprising
their moments of repose and relaxation, even hours of leisure and in the
tavern. Villagers, after listening to a sermon against the tavern and
drunkenness, murmur and are heard to exclaim: "Why does he meddle with
our affairs? Let him say his mass and leave us alone." They need him
for baptism, marriage and burial, but their affairs do not concern him.
Moreover, among the observances he prescribes, many are inconvenient,
tasteless or disagreeable--fasting, Lent, a passive part in a Latin
mass, prolonged services, ceremonies of which the details are all
insignificant, but of which the symbolic meaning is to-day of no account
to people in attendance; add to all this the mechanical recitation of
the Pater and of the Ave, genuflections and crossing one's self, and
especially obligatory confession at specified dates. Nowadays the worker
and the peasant manage without these constraints. In many villages,
there is nobody at high mass on Sundays but women, and often, in small
numbers, one or two troops of children led by the clerical instructor
and by the "Sister," with a few old men; the great majority of the men
remain outside, under the porch and on the square before the church
chatting with each other about the crops, on local news and on the
weather.

In the eighteenth century, when a curé was obliged to report to the
"intendant" the number of inhabitants of his parish, he had only to
count his communicants at the Easter service; their number was about
that of the adult and valid population, say one half or two fifths of
the sum total.[5355] Now, at Paris, out of two millions of Catholics who
are of age, about one hundred thousand perform this strict duty, aware
of its being strict and the imperative prescription of which is
stamped in their memory by a rhyme which they have learned in their
infancy;[5356] out of one hundred persons, this is equal to five
communicants, of which four are women and one is a man, in other words,
about one woman out of twelve or thirteen and one man out of fifty. In
the provinces,[5357] and especially in the country, there is good reason
for doubling and even tripling these figures; in the latter case, the
most favorable one and, without any doubt, the rarest, the proportion of
professed Christians is that of one to four among women and one man
out of twelve. Evidently, with the others who make not attend Church
regularly, with the three women and the eleven other men, their faith is
only verbal; if they are still Catholics, it is on the outside and not
within.

Besides this separation from the main body and this indifference, other
signs denote disaffection and even hostility.--In Paris, at the height
of the Revolution, in May and June 1793, the shopkeepers, artisans
and market-women, the whole of the common people, were still
religious,[5358] "kneeling in the street" when the Host passed by, and
before the relics of Saint Leu carried along in ceremonial procession,
passionately fond of his worship, and suddenly melted, "ashamed,
repentant and with tears in their eyes, when, inadvertently, their
Jacobin rulers tolerated the publicity of a procession. Nowadays,
among the craftsmen, shopkeepers and lower class of employees, there
is nothing more unpopular than the Catholic Church. Twice, under
the Restoration and the second Empire, she has joined hands with a
repressive government, while its clergy has seemed to be not merely an
efficient organ but, again, the central promoter of all repression.--
Hence, accumulated bitterness that still survives. After 1830, the
archbishopric of Saint-Germain l'Auxerrois is sacked; in 1871 the
archbishop and other ecclesiastical hostages are murdered. For two
years after 1830 a priest in his cassock dared not show himself in
public;[5359] he ran the risk of being insulted in the streets; since
1871, the majority of the Parisian electors, through the interposition
of the Municipal Council which they elect over and over again, persists
in driving "Brethren" and "Sisters" from the schools and hospitals in
order to put laymen in their places and pay twice as much for work not
done as well.[5360]--In the beginning, antipathy was confined to the
clergy; through contamination, it reached the doctrine, to include the
faith, the entire Catholicism and even Christianity itself. Under the
Restoration, it was called, in provocative language, the priest party,
and under the second Empire, the clericals. Afterwards, confronting the
Church and under a contrary name, the anti-clerical league was formed by
its adversaries, a sort of negative church which possessed, or tried
to, its own dogmas and rites, its own assemblies and discipline: and for
lack of something better, it has its own fanaticism, that of aversion;
on the word being given, it marches, rank and file, against the other,
its enemy, and manifests, if not its belief, at least its unbelief in
refusing or in avoiding the ministration of the priest. In Paris, twenty
funerals out of a hundred, purely civil, are not held in a church; out
of one hundred marriages, twenty-five, purely civil, are not blessed by
the Church; twenty-four infants out of a hundred are not baptized.[5361]

And, from Paris to the provinces, both sentiment and example are
propagated. For sixteen years, in our parliaments elected by universal
suffrage, the majority maintains that party in power which wages war
against the Church; which, systematically and on principle, is and
remains hostile to the Catholic religion; which has its own religion for
which it claims dominion; which is possessed by a doctrinal spirit, and,
in the direction of intellects and souls, aims at substituting this new
spirit for the old one; which, as far as it can, withdraws from the
old one its influence, or its share in education and in charity; which
breaks up the congregations of men, and overtaxes congregations of
women; which enrolls seminarians in the army, and deprives suspect curés
of their salaries; in short, which, through its acts collectively and
in practice, proclaims itself anti-Catholic. Many of its acts certainly
displease the peasant. He would prefer to retain the teaching "brother"
in the public school and the "sister" in the hospital as nurse or as
teacher in the school; both would cost less, and he is used to their
dark dresses and their white caps; moreover, he is not ill-disposed
towards his resident curé, who is a "good fellow." Nevertheless, in sum,
the rule of the curé is not to his taste; he does not wish to have him
back, and he distrusts priests, especially the aspect of their allies
who now consist of the upper bourgeoisie and the nobles. Hence, out
of ten million electors, five or six millions, entertaining
partial dislikes and mute reservations, continue to vote, at least
provisionally, for anti-Christian radicals. All this shows that,
through an insensible and slow reaction, the great rural mass, following
the example of the great urban mass, is again becoming pagan[5362]; for
one hundred years the wheel turns in this sense, without stopping, and
this is serious, still more serious for the nation than for the Church.

In France, the inner Christianity, has, for all that, through the dual
effect of its Catholic and French envelope, grown warmer among the
clergy especially among the regular clergy, but is has cooled off among
the people and it is especially here that it is needed.

*****

Post Scriptum:

Taine died in 1893 not long after having written this. Much has happened
since and the struggle between "Lay Republicans" and the Catholic
Church has continued. In "QUID 2000," a French popular reference manual
containing on page 515 some notes on the evolution of the Catholic
religion in France, we can read the following:

"1899-11-11 the police occupies l'Assomption, 6, rue François Ier. The
Augustin brothers are accused in court for breaking the law forbidding
unauthorized assemblies... 1900 Thomas, mayor of Kremlin-Bicêtre,
forbids the wearing of the ecclesiastical costume in his town. This
example is followed by others..." Reading further we may learn that
later in 1901 to 1904 the various Catholic orders are forbidden
or dissolved and most French Church property seized. In 1905 a law
decreeing a separation between the State and the Church is narrowly and
bitterly voted and a struggle between France and the Pope begins ...
Between 1914 and 1918 25 000 priests and seminarians are mobilized and
app. 5000 among them fall. This disarms many of the Church's enemies and
in 1920 funds are appropriated for the re-establishment of the French
embassy to the Pope in Rome. etc. etc. Today the Catholic religion is
tolerated more or less in the same manner as Judaism, Islam etc. (SR.)


*****

[Footnote 5301: The Budget of 1881. 17,010 desservans of small parishes
have 900 francs per annum; 4500 have 1000 francs; 9492, sixty years of
age and over, have from 1100 to 1300 francs. 2521 curés of the second
class have from 1200 to 1300 francs; 850 curés of the first class, or
rated the same, have from 1500 to 1600 francs; 65 archiprêtre curés have
1600 francs, that of Paris 2400 francs; 709 canons have from 1600 to
2400 francs; 193 vicars-general have from 2500 to 4000 francs.--Abbé
Bougaud, "le Grand Péril," etc., p.23. In the diocese of Orleans, which
may be taken as an average type, fees, comprising the receipts for
masses, are from 250 to 300 francs per annum, which brings the salary of
an ordinary desservant up to about 1200 francs.]

[Footnote 5302: The fees, etc., of the curé of the Madeleine are
estimated at about 40,000 francs a year. The prefect of police has
40,000 francs a year, and the prefect of the Seine, 50,000 francs.]

[Footnote 5303: Prælectiones juris canonici, II., 264-267.]

[Footnote 5304: Ibid., II., 268.]

[Footnote 5305: "The Ancient Régime," pp. 119, 147. (Ed. Laffont I. pp.
92, 115.) (On the "Chartreuse" of Val Saint-Pierre, read the details
given by Merlon de Thionville in his "Mémoires.")]

[Footnote 5306: Prælectiones juris canonici, II.,205. (Edict of Louis
XIII., 1629, art. 9.)]

[Footnote 5307: The following are other instances. With the "Filles de
Saint-Vincent de Paule," the superior of the "Prètres de la Mission"
proposes two names and all the Sisters present choose one or the other
by a plurality of votes. Local superiors are designated by the Council
of Sisters who always reside at the principal establishment.--With the
"Frères des Écoles Chrétiennes," assembled at the call of the assistants
in function, a general chapter meets at Paris, 27 rue Oudinot. This
chapter, elected by all professed members belonging to the order,
comprises 15 directors of the leading houses and 15 of the older
brethren who have been at least fifteen years in profession. Besides
these 30, the assistants in function, or who have resigned, and the
visitors of the houses form, by right, a part of the chapter which
comprises 72 members. This chapter elects the general superior for ten
years. He is again eligible; he appoints for three years the directors
of houses, and he can prolong or replace them. With the Carthusians,
the superior-general is elected by the professed brethren of the Grande
Chartreuse who happen to be on hand when the vacancy occurs. They vote
by sealed ballots unsigned, under the presidency of two priors without a
vote.]

[Footnote 5308: The reader may call to mind the portrait of Brother
Philippe by Horace Vernet. For details of the terrible mortifications
inflicted on himself by Lacordaire see his life by Father Chocarne.
"Every sort of mortification which the saints prized, hair-cloth jackets
of penance, scourges, whips of every kind and form, he knew of and
used.... He scourged himself daily and often several times during the
day. During Lent and especially on Good Friday he literally scored and
flayed himself alive."]

[Footnote 5309: Notes (unpublished) by Count Chaptal.]

[Footnote 5310: "État des congrégations, communantés et associations
religieuses, autorisées et non-autorisées, dressé en execution"
according to article 12, law of Dec. 28, 1876. (Imprimerie nationale,
1878)--"L'Institut des frères des écoles chrétiennes," by Eugène Rendu
(1882), p. 10.--Th. W. Allies, "Journal d'un voyage en France, p.81.
(Conversation with Brother Philippe, July 16, 1845.)--"Statistique de
Institut des Frères des Ecoles Chrétiennes," Dec.31, 1888. (Drawn up by
the head establishment.) Out of the 121 houses of 1789, there were 117
of these in France and 4 in the colonies. Out of the 1,286 houses of
1888, there are 1,010 in France and in the colonies. The other 276 are
in other countries.]

[Footnote 5311: Émile Keller, "Les Congrégations religieuses en France"
(1880), preface, xxIII., xvIII., and p. 492.]

[Footnote 5312: In 1789, 37,000 Sisters; in 1866, 86,000 Sisters
("Statistique de la France," 1866); in 1878, 127,753 Sisters ("État des
congrégations," etc.).]

[Footnote 5313:. (But today, around 1990, there are only 5 nuns per
10,000 inhabitants. SR.)]

[Footnote 5314: Émile Keller, ibid., passim.--In many communities of
men and of women the personal expenses of each member are not over
300 francs per annum; with the Trappists at Devielle this is the
maximum.--If the value of the useful labor performed by these 160,000
monks and nuns be estimated at 1000 francs per head, which is below the
real figures, the total is 160 millions per annum; estimate the expenses
of each monk or nun at 500 francs per head and the total is 80 millions
a year. The net gain to the public is 80 millions per annum.]

[Footnote 5315: "La Charité à Nancy," by Abbé Girard, p. 245.--The
same judgment is confirmed by the Rev. T. W. Allies, in a "Journal d'un
voyage en France," 1848, p. 291. "The dogma of the real presence is the
centre of the whole religious life of the Church (Catholic): it is the
secret support of the priest in his mission, so painful and so
filled with abnegation. It is by this that the religious orders are
maintained."]

[Footnote 5316: This question is examined by St. Thomas in his Summa
Theologica.]

[Footnote 5317: For the past twenty years, owing to the researches of
psychologists and physiologists, we have begun to know something of the
subterranean regions of the mind and the latent processes taking place
there. The storing, the residue and unconscious combination of images,
the spontaneous and automatic transformation of images into sensations,
the composition, disassociations and splitting into dual personalities
of the ego, the alternate or simultaneous coexistence of two, or more
than two, distinct persons in the same individual, the suggestions
accomplished later and at fixed dates, the chock of the return from
the inside to the outside, and the physical effect on the nervous
extremities of the mental sensations, all these late discoveries have
resulted in a new conception of mind, and psychology, thus renewed,
throws a sharp light on history.]

[Footnote 5318: See in "Herodiade," by Flaubert, the depicting of
these "kingdoms of the world or of the century," as they appeared to
Palestinian eyes in the first century. For the first four centuries we
must consider, confronting the Church, by way of contrast and in full
relief, the pagan and Roman world, the life of the day, especially in
the baths, at the circus, in the theatre, the gratuitous supplies of
food, of physical enjoyments and of spectacles to the idle populace of
the towns, the excesses of public and private luxury, the enormity of
unproductive expenditure, and all this in a society which, without
our machines, supported itself by hand-labor; next, the scantiness and
dearness of available capital, a legal rate of interest at twelve
per cent, the latifundia, the oberati, the oppression of the working
classes, the diminution of free laborers, the exhaustion of slaves,
depopulation and impoverishment, at the end the colon attached to
his glebe, the workman to his tool, the curiale to his curie, the
administrative interference of the centralized State, its fiscal
exigencies, all that it sucked out of the social body, and the more
strenuously inasmuch as there was less to be sucked out of it. Against
these sensual habits and customs and this economic system the Church has
preserved its primitive aversion, especially on two points, in relation
to the theatre and to loaning money at interest.]

[Footnote 5319: See St. Paul's epistle to the Romans, ch. I., 26 to 32;
also the First Epistle to the Corinthians, ch. XIII.]

[Footnote 5320: The First Epistle of John, II. 16.]

[Footnote 5321: Acts of the Apostles, ch. IV.,32, 34 and 35.]

[Footnote 5322: I cannot help but conclude that the two world wars,
started by Christian Governments, led to socialism and religious decay.
How large a role television played in removing the need for clerical
guidance and comfort is hard to determine, the fact is that the Churches
in Europe stand mostly empty and Taine's description fits rather will on
today's society. (SR.)]

[Footnote 5323: Saint Athanasius, the principal founder of Christian
metaphysics, did not know Latin and learned it with great difficulty
at Rome when he came to defend his doctrine. On the other hand, the
principal founder of western theology, Saint Augustin, had only an
imperfect knowledge of Greek.]

[Footnote 5324: For example, the three words which are essential and
technical in metaphysical speculations on the divine essence, have no
real equivalent in Latin, while the words by which an attempt is made
to render these terms, verbum, substantia, persona, are very inexact.
Persona and substantia, in Tertullian, are already used in their Roman
sense, which is always juridical and special.]

[Footnote 5325: Sir Henry Sumner Maine, "Ancient Law," p. 354. The
following is profound in a remarkable degree: "Greek metaphysical
literature contained the sole stock of words and ideas out of which
the human mind could provide itself with the means of engaging in the
profound controversies as to the Divine Persons, the Divine Substance,
and the Divine Natures. The Latin language and the meager Latin
philosophy were quite unequal to the undertaking, and accordingly
the western or Latin-speaking provinces of the Empire adopted the
conclusions of the East without disputing or reviewing them."]

[Footnote 5326: Maine, "Ancient Law," p.357 "The difference between the
two theological systems is accounted for by the fact that, in passing
from the East to the West, theological speculation had passed from a
climate of Greek metaphysics to a climate of Roman law." Out of this
arose the Western controversies on the subject of Free-will and Divine
Providence. "The problem of Free-will arises when we contemplate a
metaphysical conception under a legal aspect."]

[Footnote 5327: Ibid. "The nature of Sin and its transmission by
inheritance; the debt owed by man and its vicarious satisfaction; the
necessity and sufficiency of the Atonement; above all the apparent
antagonism between Free-will and the Divine Providence-these were the
points which the West began to debate as ardently as ever the East
had discussed the articles of its more special creed." This juridical
fashion of conceiving theology appears in the works of the oldest Latin
theologians, Tertullian and Saint Cyprian.]

[Footnote 5328: Ibid. Among the technical notions borrowed from law and
here used in Latin theology we may cite "the Roman penal system, the
Roman theory of the obligations established by Contract or Delict," the
intercession or act by which one assumes the obligation contracted
by another, "the Roman view of Debts and of the modes of incurring,
extinguishing and transmitting them, the Roman notion of the continuance
of individual existence by Universal Succession,"]

[Footnote 5329: Cf. Fustel de Coulanges, "La Gaule Romaine," p.96
and following pages, on the rapidity, facility and depth of the
transformation by which Gaul became Latinized.]

[Footnote 5330: The Church of England, in its confession of faith, makes
this express declaration.]

[Footnote 5331: As called by Joseph de Maistre, referring to the Greek
church.]

[Footnote 5332: Duke Sermoneta-Gaetani has shown in his geographic map
of the "Divine Comedy" the exact correspondence of this poem with the
"Somme" by Saint Thomas.--It was already said of Dante in the middle
ages, Theologus Dantes nullius dogmatis expers.]

[Footnote 5333: Cf. "L'Empire des tsars et les Russes," by Anatole
Leroy-Beaulieu, vol. III., entire, on the characteristics of the
Russian clergy.]

[Footnote 5334: Bossuet, ed. Deforis, VI., 169. The Meaux catechism
(reproduced, with some additions, in the catechism adopted by Napoleon).
"What works are deemed satisfactory?"--"Works unpleasant to us imposed
by the priest as a penance."--"Repeat some of them."--"Alms-giving,
fastings, austerities, privations of what is naturally agreeable,
prayers, spiritual readings."]

[Footnote 5335: Ibid. "Why is confession ordained?"--"To humble the
sinner.. . "--"Why again?"--"To submit one's self to the power of the
Keys and to the judgment of the priests who have the power to punish and
remit sins."]

[Footnote 5336: Bossuet, ibid., Catéchisme de Meaux, VI., 140-142.]

[Footnote 5337: "Manreze du prêtre," by Father Caussette, I., 37.
"Do you see that young man of twenty-five who will soon traverse the
sanctuary to find the sinners awaiting him? It is the God of this earth
who sanctifies him... Were Jesus Christ to descend into the confessional
he would say, Ego te absolvo. He is going to say with the same
authority, Ego te absolvo. Now this is an act of the supreme power;
it is greater, says Saint Augustin, than the creation of heaven and
earth."--T. W. Allies, "Journal d'un voyage en France," 1845, p.97.
"Confession is the chain which binds all Christian life."]

[Footnote 5338: "Manreze du prêtre," I., 36. "The Mother of God
has undoubtedly more credit than you, but she has less authority.
Undoubtedly, she accords favors, but she has not given one single
absolution."]

[Footnote 5339: Could one imagine that Stalin, that that apostate former
student expelled from the Tiflis Theological Seminary, would, on reading
Taine's text, have conceived the idea of having communist missionaries,
directed by the KGB in Moscow, direct an army of agents inside the
capitalist world? (SR.)]

[Footnote 5340: Like a central committee of the communist party? (SR.)]

[Footnote 5341: Prælectiones juris canonici, I., 101. "The power
entrusted to St. Peter and the apostles is wholly independent of the
community of believers."]

[Footnote 5342: Here Lenin pretended to install the Proletariat and
announced its (his own) dictatorship. (SR.)]

[Footnote 5343: Here we have a clear model for an International
Communist Party, tasked with the creation of a visible organization
whenever this is possible, but with an invisible structure of
missionaries, recruiters, controllers, policemen and agents, since any
bourgeois state must, once it discovers the party's true aims, forbid it
and drive it underground. To the Christian dream of an eternal life in
heaven or hell, the communist movement has its promise of a millenary
on earth contrasted by the immediate annihilation of any traitor or
dangerous opponent. (SR.)]

[Footnote 5344: "Cours alphabétique et méthodique du droit canon," by
Abbé André, and "Histoire générale de Église, vol. XIII., by Bercastel
et Henrion. The reader will find in these two works an exposition of
the diverse statutes of the Catholic Church in other countries. Each of
these statutes differs from ours in one or several important articles;
the fixed, or even territorial, endowment of the clergy, the nomination
to the episcopate by the chapter, or by the clergy of the diocese, or
by the bishops of the province, public competition for curacies,
irremovability, participation of the chapter in the government of the
diocese, restoration of the officialité; return to the prescriptions of
the Council of Trent (Cf. especially the Concordats between the Holy
See and Prussia, Bavaria, Wurtemberg, Baden, the two Hesses, Belgium,
Austria, Spain, and the statutes accepted or established by the Holy See
in Ireland and the United States.)]

[Footnote 5345: The brothers Allignol, "De l'État actuel du clergé en
France," p.248. "The mind of the desservant is no longer his own. Let
him beware of any personal sentiment or opinion!... He must cease
being himself and must lose, it may be said, his personality."--Ibid.,
preface, XIX. "Both of us, placed in remotes country parishes,... are
in a position to know the clergy of the second class well, to which, for
twenty years, we belong."]

[Footnote 5346: The principal means of action of the State is the right
of appointing bishops. The Pope, however, installs them; consequently,
the Minister of Worship must have an understanding beforehand with
the nuncio, which obliges it to nominate candidates irreproachable in
doctrine and morals, but it avoids nominating ecclesiastics that are
eminent, enterprising or energetic; once installed and not removable,
they would cause trouble. Such, for example, was M. Pie, bishop
of Poitiers, nominated by M. de Falloux in the time of the
Prince-President, and so annoying during the Empire; in order to keep
him in check, M. Levert, the cleverest and most adroit prefect, had to
be sent to Poitiers; for many years they waged the most desperate war
under proper formalities, each playing against the other the shrewdest
and most disagreeable tricks. Finally, M. Levert, who had lost a
daughter and was denounced from the pulpit, was obliged, on account of
his wife's feelings, to leave the place. (This happened to my own
knowledge, as between 1852 and 1867 I visited Poitiers five times.) At
the present day, the Catholics complain that the government nominates
none but mediocre men for bishops and accepts none others for cantonal
curés. (Today, in 1999, we can look back on a century of quarrelling,
even war, between Rome and Paris with the separation of the Catholic
Church and the State in 1905, sequestration of all church property,
impoverishment of the clergy, interdiction of the different orders,
papal bulls, ending in 1914 when the State had to concentrate all effort
towards winning the war. Today the church is allowed to operate but its
influence is much reduced as it the case for all the religions since the
advent of the consumer society with television etc. SR.)]

[Footnote 5347: "The Ancient Régime," pp 171, 181, 182. (Ed. Laffont I.,
p. 129 to 139.)]

[Footnote 5348: M. de Vitrolles, "' Mémoires," I., 15. (This passage
was written in 1847.) "Under the Empire, readers were to those of the
present day as one to a thousand. Newspapers, in very small number,
scarcely obtained circulation. The public informed itself about
victories, as well as the conscription, in the articles of the
'Moniteur,' posted by the prefects."--From 1847 to 1891, we all know
by our own experience that the number of readers has augmented
prodigiously.]

[Footnote 5349: I wonder what Taine would have said of television, that
system which allows its producers to make all mankind believe that the
lies and figments of the imaginations put in front of them show the true
and real world as it is. (SR.)]

[Footnote 5350: An expression by Renan in relation to Abbé Lehir, an
accomplished professor of Hebrew.]

[Footnote 5351: Th. W. Allies, rector of Launton, "Journal d'un voyage
en France," p.245. (A speech by Father Ravignan, August 3, 1848) "What
nation in the Roman church is more prominent at the present day for its
missionary labors? France, by far. There are ten French missionaries
to one Italian." Several French congregations, especially the "Petites
Soeurs des Pauvres" and the "Frères des Écoles Chrétiennes," are so
zealous and so numerous that they overflow outside of France and have
many establishments abroad.]

[Footnote 5352: "Manreze du prêtre," by Father Caussette, II.,419: "Now
that I have placed one of your hands in those of Mary let me place the
other in those of Saint Joseph.... Joseph, whose prayers in heaven are
what commands to Jesus were on earth. Oh, what a sublime patron, and
what powerful patronage!... Joseph, associated in the glory of divine
paternity;... Joseph, who counts twenty-three kings among his ancestors!"
Along with the month of the year devoted to the adoration of Mary, there
is another consecrated to Saint Joseph.]

[Footnote 5353: "État des congrégations," etc. (1876). Eleven
congregations or communities of women are devoted to the Holy Family and
nineteen others to the Child-Jesus or to the Infancy of Jesus.]

[Footnote 5354: One of these bears the title of "Augustines de
l'intérieur de Marie" and another is devoted to the "Coeuragonisant de
Jésus."]

[Footnote 5355: At Bourron (Seine-et-Marne), in 1789, which had 600
inhabitants, the number of communicants at Easter amounted to 300; at
the present day, out of 1200 inhabitants there are 94]

[Footnote 5356: Th. W. Allies, "Journal d'un voyage en France," III., p.
18: "M. Dufresne (July 1845) tells us that out of 1,000,000 inhabitants
in Paris 300,000 attend mass and 50,000 are practising Christians."--(A
conversation with Abbé Petitot, curé of Saint-Louis d'Antin, July
7.1847.) "2,000,000 out of 32,000,000 French are really Christians
and go to confession."--At the present day (April 1890) an eminent and
well-informed ecclesiastic writes: "I estimate the number of those who
observe Easter at Paris at about 100,000."--"The number of professing
Christians varies a great deal according to parishes: Madeleine, 4,500
out of 29,000 inhabitants; Saint Augustin, 6,500 out of 29,000; Saint
Eustache, 1,750 out of 20,000; Bellancourt, 500 out of 10,000; Grenelle,
1,500 out of 47,500; and Belleville, 1,500 out of 60,000 inhabitants."]

[Footnote 5357: Abbé Bougaud, "Le Grand Péril," etc., p.44: "I know a
bishop who, on reaching his diocese, tried to ascertain how many of the
400,000 souls entrusted to his keeping performed their Easter duties. He
found 37,000. At the present day, owing to twenty years of effort,
this number reaches 55,000. Thus, more than 300,000 are practically
unbelievers."--"Vie de Mgr. Dupanloup," by Abbé Lagrange, I., 5'.
(Pastoral letter by Mgr. Dupanloup, 1851.) "He considers that he is
answerable to God for nearly 350,000 souls, of which 200,000 at least
do not fulfill their Easter duties; scarcely 45,000 perform this great
duty."]

[Footnote 5358: "The Revolution," II.,390. (Ed. Laff. I., p. 177.)]

[Footnote 5359: Th.-W. Allies, "Journal," etc., p.240 (Aug. 2, 1848,
conversation with Abbé Petitot):" In 1830, the priests were obliged
for two years to abandon wearing their costume in the street, and only
recovered their popularity by their devotion to the sick at the time
of the cholera."--In 1848, they had won back respect and sympathy; "the
people came and begged them to bless their liberty-poles."--Abbé Petitot
adds: "The church gains ground every day, but rather among the upper
than the lower classes."]

[Footnote 5360: Émile Keller, "Les Congrégations," etc., p.362 (with the
figures in relation to Schools).--"Débats" of April 27, 1890 (with
the figures in relation to hospitals. Deaths increased in the eighteen
secularized hospitals at the rate of four per cent).]

[Footnote 5361: Fournier de Flaix, "Journal de la Société de
Statistique," number for Sep. 1890, p.260. (According to registers kept
in the archiepiscopal archives in Paris)--"Compte-rendu des operations
du Conseil d'administration des pompes funèbres à Paris" (1889):
funerals wholly civil in 1882, 19.33 per cent; in 1888, 19.04 per cent;
in 1889, 18.63 per cent.--"Atlas de statistique municipale." ("Débats"
of July 10, 1890:) The poorer the arrondissement, the greater the
number of civil funerals; Ménilmontant wins hands down, one third of the
funerals here being civil.]

[Footnote 5362: Abbé Joseph Roux (curé at first of Saint-Silvain, near
Tulle, and then in a small town of Corrèze), "Pensées," p. 132 (1886):
"There is always something of the pagan in the peasant. He is original
sin in all its brutish simplicity."--"The peasant passed from paganism
to Christianity mostly through miracles; he would go back at less cost
from Christianity to paganism.... It is only lately that a
monster exists, the impious peasant.... The rustic, in spite of
school-teachers, even in spite of the curés, believes in sorcerers and in
sorcery the same as the Gauls and Romans."--Therefore the means employed
against him are wholly external. ("Vie de Mgr. Dupanloup," by Abbé
Lagrange, pastoral notes of Mgr. Dupanloup, I., 64.) "What has proved
of most use to you in behalf of religion in your diocese during the last
fifteen years? Is it through this--is it through that? No, it is through
medals and crosses. Whatever is given to these good people affords them
pleasure; they like to have presents of Our Lord and the Blessed Virgin.
These objects, with them, stand for religion. A father who comes
with his child in his arms to receive the medal will not die without
confessing himself."--The reader will find on the clergy and peasantry
in the south of France details and pictures taken from life in
the novels of Ferdinand Fabre ("L'abbé Tigrane," "les Courbezons,"
"Lucifer,," "Barnabé," "Mon Oncle Célestin," "Xavière," "Ma Vocation").]





BOOK SIXTH. PUBLIC INSTRUCTION.




CHAPTER I. PUBLIC INSTRUCTION




I. Public instruction and its three effects.

     Public instruction and its three effects.--Influences of the
     master, of the pupils on each other, and of discipline.
     --Case in which all three tend towards producing a particular
     type of man.

AT fixed intervals a man, in a room, gathers around him children,
youths, a group of young people, ten, twenty, thirty or more; he talks
to them for one or two hours and they listen to him. They sit alongside
of each other, look in each other's faces, touch each other's elbows,
feel that they are class-mates, of the same age and occupied with the
same tasks. They form a society and in two ways, one with another and
all with the master. Hence they live under a statute: every society has
one of its own, spontaneous or imposed on it; as soon as men, little or
big, come together in any number, in a drawing-room, in a café, in the
street, they find themselves subject to a local charter, a sort of code
which prescribes to them, or interdicts a certain sort of conduct. And
so with the school: positive rules along with many tacit rules are
here observed and these form a mould which stamps on minds and souls a
lasting imprint. Whatever a public lesson may be, whatever its object,
secular or ecclesiastic, whether its subject-matter is religious or
scientific, from the bottom to the top of the scale, from the primary
school and the catechism up to the great seminary, in upper schools and
in the faculties, we find in abridgment the academic institution. Of all
social engines, it is probably the most powerful and the most efficient;
for it exercises three kinds of influence on the young lives it enfolds
and directs, one through the teacher, another through the fellow
students and the last through rules and regulations.

On the one hand, the master, considered a scholar, teaches with
authority and the pupils, who feel that they are ignorant, learn with
confidence.--On the other hand, outside of his family and the domestic
circle, the student finds in his group of comrades a new, different
and complete world which has its own ways and customs, its own sense of
honor and its own vices, its own view of things (esprit de corps),
in which independent and spontaneous judgments arise, precocious and
haphazard presentiments, expressions of opinion on all things human and
divine. It is in this environment that he begins to think for himself,
in contact with others like himself and his equals, in contact with
their ideas, much more intelligible and acceptable to him than those of
mature men, and therefore much more persuasive, contagious and exciting;
these form for him the ambient, penetrating atmosphere in which his
thought arises, grows and shapes itself; he here adopts his way of
looking at the great society of adults of which he is soon to become
a member, his first notions of justice and injustice, and hence an
anticipated attitude of respect or of rebellion, in short, a
prejudice which, according as the spirit of the group is reasonable
or unreasonable, is either sound or unsound, social or
antisocial.--Finally, the discipline of the school has its effect.
Whatever its rules and regulations may be, whether liberal or despotic,
lax or strict, monastic, military or worldly, whether a boarding or a
day school, mixed or exclusive, in town or in country, with predominance
of gymnastic training or intellectual efforts, with the mind given to
the study of things or to the study of words, the pupil enters into
a ready-made setting. According to the diversities of this setting
or framework he practices different exercises; he contracts different
habits; he is developed or stunted physically or morally, in one sense
or in a contrary sense. Hence, just as the system is good or bad, he
becomes more or less capable or incapable of bodily or mental effort,
of reflection, of invention, of taking the initiative, of starting an
enterprise, of subordinating himself to a given purpose, of willing,
persistent association, that is to say, in sum, of playing an active and
useful part on the stage of the world he is about to enter upon. Observe
that this apprenticeship in common, sitting on benches according to
certain regulations and under a master, lasts six, ten, fifteen years
and often twenty; that girls are not exempt from it; that not one boy
out of a hundred is educated to the end at home by a private teacher;
that, in secondary and even in superior instruction, the school wheel
turns uniformly and without stopping ten hours a day if the scholar
boards outside, and twenty-four hours a day if he boards within; that
at this age the human clay is soft, that it has not yet received its
shape, that no acquired and resistant form yet protects it from the
potter's hand, against the weight of the turning-wheel, against the
friction of other morsels of clay kneaded alongside of it, against the
three pressures, constant and prolonged, which compose public education.

Evidently, there is here an enormous force, especially if the three
pressures, instead of opposing each other, as often happens, combine and
converge towards the production of a certain finished type of man; if,
from infancy to youth and from youth to adult age, the successive stages
of preparation are superposed in such a way as to stamp the adopted type
deeper and with more exactness; if all the influences and operations
that impress it, near or far, great or small, internal or external, form
together a coherent, defined, applicable and applied system. Let the
State undertake its fabrication and application, let it monopolize
public education, let it become its regulator, director and contractor,
let it set up and work its machine throughout the length and breadth of
the land, let it, through moral authority and legal constraint, force
the new generation to enter therein--it will find twenty years later
in these minors who have become major, the kind and number of ideas it
aimed to provide, the extent, limit and form of mind it approves of, and
the moral and social prejudice that suits its purposes.




II. Napoleon's Educational Instruments.

     Napoleon's aim.--University monopoly.--Revival and multitude
     of private schools.--Napoleon regards them unfavorably.--His
     motives.--Private enterprises compete with public
     enterprise.--Measures against them.--Previous authorization
     necessary and optional suppression of them.--Taxes on free
     education in favor of the university.--Decree of November,
     1811.--Limitation of secondary teaching in private schools.
     --How the university takes away their pupils.--Day-schools as
     prescribed.--Number of boarders limited.--Measures for the
     restriction or assimilation of ecclesiastical schools.
     --Recruits forcibly obtained in prominent and ill-disposed
     families.--Napoleon the sole educator in his empire.

Such is the aim of Napoleon:[6101]

"In the establishment of an educational corps," he says to
himself,[6102] "my principal aim is to secure the means for directing
political and moral opinions."

Still more precisely, he counts on the new institution to set up and
keep open for inspection a universal and complete police registry. "This
registry must be organized in such a way as to keep notes on each child
after age of nine years."[6103] Having seized adults he wants to seize
children also, watch and shape future Frenchmen in advance; brought up
by him, in his hands or in sight, they become ready-made a assistants,
docile subjects and more docile than their parents.[6104] Amongst the
latter, there are still to many unsubmissive and refractory spirits, too
many royalists and too many republicans; domestic traditions from family
to family contradict each other or vary, and children grow up in their
homes only to clash with each other in society afterwards. Let us
anticipate this conflict; let us prepare them for concord; all brought
up in the same fashion, they will some day or other find themselves
unanimous,[6105] not only apparently, as nowadays through fear or force,
but in fact and fundamentally, through inveterate habit and by previous
adaptation of imagination and affection. Otherwise, "there will be
no stable political state" in France;[6106] "so long as one grows up
without knowing whether to be a republican or monarchist, Catholic
or irreligious, the State will never form a nation; it will rest on
uncertain and vague foundations; it will be constantly exposed to
disorder and change."--Consequently, he assigns to himself the monopoly
of public instruction; he alone is to enjoy the right to manufacture and
sell this just like salt and tobacco; "public instruction, throughout
the Empire, is entrusted exclusively to the university. No school, no
establishment for instruction whatever," superior, secondary, primary,
special, general, collateral, secular or ecclesiastic, "may be organized
outside of the imperial university and without the authorization of its
chief."[6107]

Every factory of educational commodities within these boundaries and
operating under this direction is of two sorts. Some of them, in the
best places, interconnected and skillfully grouped, are national
units founded by the government, or at its command, by the communes,--
faculties, lycées, colleges, and small communal schools; others,
isolated and scattered about, are private institutions founded by
individuals, such as boarding-schools and institutions for secondary
instruction, small free schools. The former, State undertakings, ruled,
managed, supported and turned to account by it, according to the plan
prescribed by it and for the object it has proposed, are simply a
prolongation of itself; it is the State which operates in them and
which, directly and entirely, acts through them: they enjoy therefore
all its favor and the others all its disfavor. The latter, during
the Consulate, revived or sprung up by hundreds, in all directions,
spontaneously, under the pressure of necessity, and because the young
need instruction as they need clothes, but haphazard, as required
according to demand and supply, without any superior or common
regulation--nothing being more antipathetic to the governmental genius
of Napoleon:

"It is impossible,"[6108] he says, "to remain longer as we are, since
everybody can start an education shop the same as a cloth shop"

and furnish as he pleases, or as his customers please, this or that
piece of stuff, even of poor quality, and of this or that fashion,
even extravagant or out of date: hence so many different dresses, and a
horrible medley. One good obligatory coat, of stout cloth and suitable
cut, a uniform for which the public authority supplies the pattern, is
what should go on the back of every child, youth or young man; private
individuals who undertake this matter are mistrusted beforehand. Even
when obedient, they are only half-docile; they take their own course
and have their own preferences, they follow their own taste or that of
parents. Every private enterprise, simply because it exists and thrives,
constitutes a more or less independent and dissenting group, Napoleon,
on learning that Sainte-Barbe, restored under the direction of M. de
Lanneau, had five hundred inmates, exclaims:[6109] "How does it happen
that an ordinary private individual has so many in his house?" The
Emperor almost seems jealous; it seems as if he had just discovered a
rival in one corner of his university domain; this man is an usurper on
the domain of the sovereign; he has constituted himself a centre; he has
collected around him clients and a platoon; now, as Louis XIV. said, the
State must have no "platoons apart." Since M. de Lanneau has talent
and is successful, let him enter the official ranks and become a
functionary. Napoleon at once means to get hold of him, his house and
his pupils, and orders M. de Fontaines, Grand-Master of the University,
to negotiate the affair; M. de Lanneau will be suitably compensated;
Sainte-Barbe will be formed into a lycée, and M. de Lanneau shall be
put at the head of it. Let it be noted that he is not an opponent, an
irregular: M. de Fontaines himself praises his teaching, his excellent
mind, his perfect exactitude, and calls him the universitarian of the
university. But he does not belong to it, he stands aloof and stays
at home, he is not disposed to become a mere cog-wheel in the imperial
manufactory. Therefore, whether he is aware of it or not, he does
it harm and all the more according to his prosperity; his full house
empties the lycées; the more pupils he has the less they have. Private
enterprises in their essence enter into competition with public
enterprise.

For this reason, if tolerated by the latter, it is reluctantly and
because nothing else can be done; there are too many of them; the money
and the means to replace them at one stroke would be wanting. Moreover,
with instruction, the consumers, as with other supplies and commodities,
naturally dislike monopoly; they must be gradually brought to it;
resignation must come to them through habit. The State, accordingly, may
allow private enterprises to exist, at least for the time being. But,
on condition of their being kept in the strictest dependence, of its
arrogating to itself the right over them of life and death, of reducing
them to the state of tributaries and branches, of utilizing them, of
transforming their native and injurious rivalry into a fruitful and
forced collaboration. Not only must private schools obtain from the
State its express consent to be born, for lack of which they are closed
and their principals punished,[6110] but again, even when licensed, they
live subject to the good-will of the Grand-Master, who can and must
close them as soon as he recognizes in them "grave abuses and principles
contrary to those professed by the University." Meanwhile, the
University supports itself with their funds; since it alone has the
right to teach, it may profit by this right, concede for money the
faculty of teaching or of being taught alongside of it, oblige every
head of an institution to pay so much for himself and so much for
each of his pupils; in sum, here as elsewhere, in derogation of the
university blockade, as with the continental blockade, the state sells
licenses to certain parties. So true is this that, even with superior
instruction, when nobody competes with it, it sells them: every graduate
who gives a course of lectures on literature or on science must pay
beforehand, for the year, 75 francs at Paris and 50 francs in the
provinces. Every graduate who begin to lecture on law or medicine
must pay beforehand 150 francs at Paris and 100 francs in the
provinces.[6111] There is the same annual duty on the directors of
secondary schools, boarding-schools and private institutions. Moreover,
to obtain the indispensable license, the master of a boarding-school at
Paris must pay 300 francs, and in a province 200 francs; the principal
of an institution in Paris pays 600 francs, and in the provinces 400
francs; besides that, this license, always revocable, is granted only
for ten years; at the end of the ten years the titular must obtain
a renewal and pay the tax anew. As to his pupils, of whatever kind,
boarding scholars, day scholars, or even gratis,[6112] the University
levies on each a tax equal to the twentieth of the cost of full board;
the director himself of the establishment is the one who fixes and
levies the tax; he is the responsible collector of it, book-keeper
and the debtor. Let him not forget to declare exactly the terms of his
school and the number of his pupils; otherwise, there is investigation,
verification, condemnation, restitution, fine, censure, and the possible
closing of his establishment.

Regulations, stricter and stricter, tighten the cord around his neck
and, in 1811, the rigid articles of the last decree draw so tight as to
insure certain strangling at short date. Napoleon counts on that.[6113]
For his lycées, especially at the start, have not succeeded; they have
failed to obtain the confidence of families;[6114] the discipline is too
military, the education is not sufficiently paternal, the principals and
professors are only indifferent functionaries, more or less egoist or
worldly. Only former subaltern officers, rude and foul-mouthed, serve
as superintendents and assistant-teachers. The holders of State
scholarships bring with them "habits fashioned out of a bad education,"
or by the ignorance of almost no education at all,[6115] so that "for
a child that is well born and well brought up," their companionship is
lopsided and their contact as harmful as it is repulsive. Consequently,
the lycées during the first years,[6116] solely filled with the few
holders of scholarships, remain deserted or scarcely occupied, whilst
"the élite of the young crowd into more or less expensive private
schools."

This élite of which the University is thus robbed must be got back.
Since the young do not attend the lycée because they like it, they must
come through necessity; to this end, other issues are rendered difficult
and several are entirely barred; and better still, all those that are
tolerated are made to converge to one sole central outlet, a university
establishment, in such a way that the director of each private school,
changed from a rival into a purveyor, serves the university instead
of injuring it and gives it pupils instead of taking them away. In the
first place, his high standard of instruction is limited;[6117] even
in the country and in the towns that have neither lycée nor college, he
must teach nothing above a fixed degree; if he is the principal of an
institution, this degree must not go beyond the class of the humanities;
he must leave to the faculties of the State their domain intact,
differential calculus, astronomy, geology, natural history and superior
literature. If he is the master of a boarding-school, this degree must
not extend beyond grammar classes, nor the first elements of geometry
and arithmetic; he must leave to State lycées and colleges their domain
intact, the humanities properly so called, superior lectures and means
of secondary instruction.--In the second place, in the towns possessing
a lycée or college, he must teach at home only what the University
leaves untaught;[6118] he is not deprived, indeed, of the younger boys;
he may still instruct and keep them; but he must conduct all his pupils
over ten years of age to the college or lycée, where they will regularly
follow the classes as day-scholars. Consequently, daily and twice a
day, he marches them to and fro between his house and the university
establishment; before going, in the intermission, and after the class is
dismissed he examines them in the lesson they have received out of
his house; apart from that, he lodges and feeds them, his office
being reduced to this. He is nothing beyond a watched and serviceable
auxiliary, a subaltern, a University tutor and "coach," a sort of
unpaid, or rather paying, schoolmaster and innkeeper in its employ.

All this does not yet suffice. Not only does the State recruit its
day-scholars in his establishment but it takes from him his
boarding-scholars. "On and after the first of November 1812,[6119] the
heads of institutions and the masters of boarding-schools shall receive
no resident pupils in their houses above the age of nine years, until
the lycée or college, established in the same town or place where there
is a lycée, shall have as many boarders as it can take." This complement
shall be 300 boarders per lycée; there are to be "80 lycées in full
operation "during the year 1812, and 100 in the course of the year 1813,
so that, at this last date, the total of the complement demanded,
without counting that of the colleges, amounts to 30,000
boarding-scholars. Such is the enormous levy of the State on the crop of
boarding-school pupils. It evidently seizes the entire crop in advance;
private establishments, after it, can only glean, and through tolerance.
In reality, the decree forbids them to receive boarding-scholars;
henceforth, the University will have the monopoly of them.

The proceedings against the small seminaries, more energetic
competitors, are still more vigorous. "There shall be but one secondary
ecclesiastical school in each department; the Grand-Master will
designate those that are to be maintained; the others are to be closed.
None of them shall be in the country. All those not situated in a
town provided with a lycée or with a college shall be closed. All
the buildings and furniture belonging to the ecclesiastic schools
not retained shall be seized and confiscated for the benefit of the
University. "In all places where ecclesiastical schools exist, the
pupils of these schools shall be taken to the lycée or college and join
its classes." Finally, "all these schools shall be under the control of
the University; they must be organized only by her; their prospectus and
their regulations must be drawn up by the council of the University at
the suggestion of the Grand Master. The teaching must be done only by
members of the University at the disposition of the Grand Master." In
like manner, in the lay schools, at Sainte-Barbe for example,[6120]
every professor, private tutor, or even common superintendent, must
be provided with a special authorization by the University. Staff and
discipline, the spirit and matter of the teaching, every detail of study
and recreation,[6121] all are imposed, conducted and restrained in these
so-called free establishments; whatever they may be, ecclesiastic or
secular, not only does the University surround and hamper them, but
again it absorbs and assimilates them; it does not even leave them
any external distinctive appearance. It is true that, in the small
seminaries, the exercises begin at the ringing of a bell, and the pupils
wear an ecclesiastic dress; but the priest's gown, adopted by the State
that adopts the Church, is still a State uniform. In the other private
establishments, the uniform is that which it imposes, the lay uniform,
belonging to colleges and lycées "under penalty of being closed ";
while, in addition, there is the drum, the demeanor, the habits, ways
and regularity of the barracks. All initiative, all invention, all
diversity, every professional or local adaptation is abolished.[6122]
M. de Lanneau thus wrote[6123]: "I am nothing but a sergeant-major of
languid and mangled classes... to the tap of a drum and under military
colors."

Against the encroachments of this institutional university there is no
longer neither public nor private shelter, since even domestic education
at home, is not respected. In 1808,[6124] "among the old and wealthy
families which are not in the system," Napoleon selects ten from each
department and fifty at Paris of which the sons from sixteen to eighteen
must be compelled to go to Saint-Cyr and, on leaving it, into the army
as second lieutenants.[6125] In 1813, he adds 10,000 more of them, many
of whom are the sons of Conventionalists or Vendéans, who, under the
title of guards of honor, are to form a corps apart and who are at once
trained in the barracks. All the more necessary is the subjection
to this Napoleonic education of the sons of important and refractory
families, everywhere numerous in the annexed countries. Already in
1802, Fourcroy had explained in a report to the legislative corps the
political and social utility of the future University.[6126] Napoleon,
at his discretion, may recruit and select scholars among his recent
subjects; only, it is not in a lycée that he places them, but in a still
more military school, at La Fléche, of which the pupils are all sons of
officers and, so to say, children of the army. Towards the end of 1812,
he orders the Roman prince Patrizzi to send his two sons to this school,
one seventeen years of age and the other thirteen[6127]; and, to be
sure of them, he has them taken from their home and brought there by
gendarmes. Along with these, 90 other Italians of high rank are counted
at La Fléche, the Dorias, the Paliavicinis, the Alfieris, with 120 young
men of the Illyrian provinces, others again furnished by the countries
of the Rhine confederation, in all 360 inmates at 800 per annum. The
parents might often accompany or follow their children and establish
themselves within reach of them. This privilege was not granted to
Prince Patrizzi; he was stopped on the road at Marseilles and kept
there.--In this way, through the skilful combination of legislative
prescriptions with arbitrary appointments, Napoleon becomes in fact,
directly or indirectly, the sole head-schoolmaster of all Frenchmen old
or newcomers, the unique and universal educator in his empire.




III. Napoleon's machinery.

     His machinery.--The educating body.--How its members come
     to realize their union.--Hierarchy of rank.--How ambition
     and amour-propre are gratified.--The monastic principle of
     celibacy.--The monastic and military principle of
     obedience.--Obligations contracted and discipline enforced.
     --The École Normale and recruits for the future university.

To effect this purpose, he requires a good instrument, some great human
machine which designed, put together and set up by himself, henceforth
works alone and of its own accord, without deviating or breaking down,
conformably to his instructions and always under his eye, but without
the necessity of his lending a hand and personally interfering in its
predetermined and calculated movement. The finest engines of this
sort are the religious orders, masterpieces of the Catholic, Roman and
governmental mind, all managed from above according to fixed rules in
view of a definite object, so many kinds of intelligent automatons,
alone capable of working indefinitely without loss of energy, with
persistency, uniformity and precision, at the minimum of cost and the
maximum of effect, and this through the simple play of their internal
mechanism which, fully regulated beforehand, adapts them completely and
ready-made to this special service, to the social operations which a
recognized authority and a superior intelligence have assigned to
them as their function.--Nothing could be better suited to the social
instinct of Napoleon, to his imagination, his taste, his political
policy and his plans, and on this point he loftily proclaims his
preferences.

"I know," says he to the Council of State, "that the Jesuits, as regards
instruction, have left a very great void. I do not want to restore them,
nor any other body that has its sovereign at Rome."[6128]

Nevertheless, one is necessary. "As for myself, I would rather confide
public education to a religious order than leave it as it is to-day,"
which means free and abandoned to private individuals. "But I want
neither one nor the other." Two conditions are requisite for the new
establishment. First of all,

"I want a corporation because a corporation never dies"; it alone,
through its perpetuity, maintains teaching in the way marked out for it,
brings up "according to fixed principles" successive generations, thus
assuring the stability of the political State, and "inspires youth with
a spirit and opinions in conformity with the new laws of the empire."
And this corporation must be secular. Its members are to be State and
not Church "Jesuits";[6129] they must belong to the Emperor and not to
the Pope, and will form, in the hands of the government, a civil militia
composed of "ten thousand persons," administrators and professors of
every degree, comprehending schoolmasters, an organized, coherent and
lasting militia

As it must be secular, there must be no hold on it through dogma
or faith, paradise or hell, no spiritual incitements; consequently,
temporal means are to be employed, not less effective, when one knows
how to manage them,--self-esteem, pride, (amour propre), competition,
imagination, ambition, magnificent hopes and vague dreams of unlimited
promotion, in short, the means and motives already maintaining the
temper and zeal of the army. "The educational corps must copy the
classification of military grades; "an order of promotion," a hierarchy
of places is to be instituted; no one will attain superior rank without
having passed through the inferior; "no one can become a principal
without having been a teacher, nor professor in the higher classes
without having taught in the lower ones."--And, on the other hand, the
highest places will be within reach of all; "the young, who devoted
themselves to teaching, will enjoy the perspective of rising from one
grade to another, up to the highest dignities of the State." Authority,
importance, titles, large salaries, pre-eminence, precedence,--these are
to exist in the University as in other public careers and furnish the
wherewithal for the most magnificent dreams.[6130] "The feet of this
great body[6131] will be on the college benches and its head in the
senate." Its chief, the Grand-Master, unique of his species, less
restricted, with freer hands than the ministers themselves, is to be one
of the principal personages of the empire; his greatness will exalt the
condition and feeling of his subordinates. In the provinces, on every
festive occasion or at every public ceremony, people will take pride in
seeing their rector or principal in official costume seated alongside of
the general or prefect in full uniform.[6132]

The consideration awarded to their chief will reflect on them; they will
enjoy it along with him; they will say to themselves that they too, like
him and those under him, all together, form an élite; by degrees, they
will feel that they are all one body; they will acquire the spirit of
the association and attach themselves to the University, the same as a
soldier to his regiment or like a monk to his brethren in a monastery.

Thus, as in a monastic order, one must join the University by "going
into the orders."[6133]--"I want," says Napoleon, "some solemnity
attached to this act. My purpose is that the members of the corps of
instruction should contract, not as formerly, a religious engagement,
but a civil engagement before a notary, or before the justice of the
peace, or prefect, or other (officer).... They will espouse education
the same as their forerunners espoused the Church, with this difference,
that the marriage will not be as sacred, as indissoluble.[6134]... They
will engage themselves for three, six, or nine years, and not resign
without giving notice a certain number of years beforehand." To heighten
the resemblance, "the principle of celibacy must be established, in this
sense, that a man consecrated to teaching shall not marry until after
having passed through the first stages of his career; "for example, "the
schoolmasters shall not marry before the age of twenty-five or thirty
years, after having obtained a salary of three or four thousand francs
and economized something." But, at bottom, marriage, a family, private
life, all natural and normal matters in the great world of society, are
causes of trouble and weakness in a corps where individuals, to be
good organs, must give themselves up wholly and without reserve. "In
future,[6135] not only must schoolmasters, but, again, the principals
and censors of the lycées, and the principals and rulers of the
colleges, be restricted to celibacy and a life in common."--The
last complementary and significant trait, which gives to the secular
institution the aspect of a convent, is this: "No woman shall have a
lodging in, or be admitted into, the lycées and colleges."

Now, let us add to the monastic principle of celibacy the monastic and
military principle of obedience; the latter, in Napoleon's eyes, is
fundamental and the basis of the others; this principle being accepted,
a veritable corporation exists; members are ruled by one head and
command becomes effective.[6136] "There will be," says Napoleon, "a
corps of instructors, if all the principals, censors and professors have
one or several chiefs, the same as the Jesuits had their general and
their provincial," like the soldiers of a regiment with their colonel
and captain. The indispensable link is found; individuals, in this way,
keep together, for they are held by authorities, under one regulation.
As with a volunteer in a regiment, or a monk who enters a convent,
the members of the University will accept its total régime in advance,
present and future, wholly and in detail, and will subject themselves
under oath. "They are to take an engagement[6137] to faithfully observe
the statutes and regulations of the University. They must promise
obedience to the Grand-Master in everything ordered by him for the
service of the Emperor, and for the advantage of education. They must
engage not to quit the educational corps and abandon their functions
before having obtained the Grand-Master's consent. They are to accept
no other public or private salaried function without the authentic
permission of the Grand-Master. They are bound to give notice to the
Grand-Master and his officers of whatever comes to their knowledge that
is opposed to the doctrine and principles of the educational corps
in the establishments for public instruction." There are many other
obligations, indefinite or precise,[6138] of which the sanction is
not only moral, but, again, legal, all notable and lasting, an entire
surrender of the person who suffers more or less profoundly at having
accepted them, and whose compulsory resignation must be assured by
the fear of punishment. "Care must be taken[6139] to insure severe
discipline everywhere: the professors themselves are to be subject
in certain cases to the penalty of arrest; they will lose no more
consideration on this account than the colonels who are punished in the
same manner."[6140] It is the least of all penalties; there are others
of greater and greater gravity,[6141] "the reprimand in presence of an
academical board, censure in presence of the University board, transfer
to an inferior office, suspension with or without entire or partial
deprivation of salary, half-pay or put on the retired list, or stricken
off the University roll," and, in the latter case, "rendered incapable
of obtaining employment in any other public administration."--"Every
member of the University[6142] who shall fail to conform to the
subordination established by the statutes and regulations, or in respect
due to superiors, shall be reprimanded, censured or suspended from
his functions according to the gravity of the case." In no case may he
withdraw of his own accord, resign at will, and voluntarily return
to private life; he is bound to obtain beforehand the Grand-Master's
assent; and, if the latter refuses this, he must renew his application
three times, every two months, with the formalities, the delays and
the importunacy of a long procedure; failing in which, he is not
only stricken from the rolls, but again "condemned to a confinement
proportioned to the gravity of the circumstances," and which may last a
year.

A system of things ending in a prison is not attractive, and is
established only after great resistance. "We were under the necessity,"
says the superior council,[6143] "of taking candidates as they could
be found, differing infinitely in methods, principles and sentiments,
accustomed to almost unlimited pardon or, at least, to being governed by
the caprices of parents and nearly all disliking the régime attempted to
be enforced on them." Moreover, through this intervention of the State,
"the local authorities find one of their most cherished prerogatives
wrested from them." In sum, "the masters detested the new duties
imposed on them; the administrators and bishops protested against
the appointments not made at their suggestion; fathers of families
complained of the new taxes they had to pay. It is said that the
University is known only by its imposts and by its forced regulations;
again, in 1811, most of its masters are incompetent, or intractable, and
of a bad spirit.--There is still another reason for tightening the cord
that binds them into a corporation. "The absolute subordination of every
individual belonging to the University is its first necessity; without
discipline and without obedience, no University could exist. This
obedience must be prompt, and, in grave cases, where recourse must
be had to the authority of the government, obedience must always be
provisional." But, on this incurably refractory staff, pressure is
not enough; it has grown old and hardened; the true remedy, therefore,
consists in replacing it with a younger one, more manageable, expressly
shaped and wrought out in a special school, which will be for the
University what Fontainebleau is for the army, what the grand seminaries
are for the clergy, a nursery of subjects carefully selected and
fashioned beforehand.

Such is the object of the "École Normale."[6144] Young students enter it
at the age of seventeen and bind themselves to remain in the University
at least ten years.[6145] Young students enter it at the age of
seventeen (for a period of 3 years) and bind themselves afterwards to
remain in the University at least ten years. It is a boarding-school
and they are obliged to live in common: "individual exits are not
allowed," while "the exits in common... in uniform... can be made only
under the direction and conduct of superintendent masters.. .. These
superintendents inspect the pupils during their studies and recreations,
on rising and on going to bed and during the night... No pupil is
allowed to pass the hours set aside for recreation in his own room
without permission of the superintendent. No pupil is allowed to
enter the hall of another division without the permission of two
superintendents.... The director of studies must examine the books
of the pupils whenever he deems it necessary, and as often as once a
month." Every hour of the day has its prescribed task; all exercises,
including religious observances, are prescribed, each in time and place,
with a detail and meticulousness, as if purposely to close all possible
issues to personal initiation and everywhere substitute mechanical
uniformity for individual diversities. "The principal duties of the
pupils are respect for religion, attachment to the sovereign and the
government, steady application, constant regularity, docility and
submission to superiors; whoever fails in these duties is punished
according to the gravity of the offense."[6146]--In 1812,[6147] the
Normal School is still a small one, scarcely housed, lodged in the upper
stories of the lycée Louis le Grand, and composed of forty pupils and
four masters. But Napoleon has its eyes on it and is kept informed of
what goes on in it. He does not approve of the comments on the "Dialogue
de Sylla et d'Eucrate," by Montesquieu, on the "Éloge de Marc Aurèle,"
by Thomas, on the "Annales" of Tacitus: "Let the young read Cæsar's
commentaries... Corneille, Bossuet, are the masters worth having; these,
under the full sail of obedience, enter into the established order of
things of their time; they strengthen it, they illustrate it," they
are the literary coadjutors of public authority. Let the spirit of
the Normal School conform to that of these great men. The University
establishment is the original, central workshop which forges, finishes
and supplies the finest pieces, the best wheels. Just now the workshop
is incomplete, poorly fitted out, poorly directed and still rudimentary;
but it is to be enlarged and completed and made to turn out more and
better work. For the time being, it produces only what is needed to fill
the annual vacancies in the lycées and in the colleges. Nevertheless,
the first decree states that it is "intended to receive as many as
three hundred youths."[6148] The production of this number will fill
all vacancies, however great they may be, and fill them with products of
superior and authentic quality. These human products thus manufactured
by the State in its own shop, these school instruments which the State
stamps with its own mark, the State naturally prefers. It imposes them
on its various branches; it puts them by order into its lycées and
colleges; at last, it accepts no others; not only does it confer on
itself the monopoly of teaching, but again the preparation of the
masters who teach. In 1813,[6149] a circular announces that "the number
of places that chance to fall vacant from year to year, in the various
University establishments, sensibly diminishes according as the
organization of the teaching body becomes more complete and regular in
its operation, as order and discipline are established, and as education
becomes graduated and proportionate to diverse localities. The moment
has thus arrived for declaring that the Normal School is henceforth the
only road by which to enter upon the career of public instruction; it
will suffice for all the needs of the service."




VI. Objects and sentiments.

     Object of the educational corps and adaptation of youth to
     the established order of things.--Sentiments required of
     children and adults.--Passive acceptance of these rules.
     --Extent and details of school regulations.--Emulation and the
     desire to be at the head.--Constant competition and annual
     distribution of prizes.

What is the object of this service?--Previous to the Revolution, when
directed by, or under the supervision of, the Church, its great object
was the maintenance and strengthening of the faith of the young.
Successor of the old kings, the new ruler underlines[6150] among "the
bases of education," "the precepts of the Catholic religion," and this
phrase he writes himself with a marked intention; when first drawn
up, the Council of State had written the Christian religion; Napoleon
himself, in the definitive and public decree, substitutes the narrowest
term for the broadest.[6151] In this particular, he is politic, taking
one step more on the road on which he has entered through the Concordat,
desiring to conciliate Rome and the French clergy by seeming to give
religion the highest place.--But it is only a place for show, similar to
that which he assigns to ecclesiastical dignitaries in public ceremonies
and on the roll of precedence. He does not concern himself with
reanimating or even preserving earnest belief: far from that:

"it should be so arranged," he says,[6152] "that young people may be
neither too bigoted nor too incredulous: they should be adapted to the
state of the nation and of society."

All that can be demanded of them is external deference, personal
attendance on the ceremonies of worship, a brief prayer in Latin
muttered in haste at the beginning and end of each lesson,[6153] in
short, acts like those of raising one's hat or other public marks of
respect, such as the official attitudes imposed by a government, author
of the Concordat, on its military and civil staff. They likewise, the
lyceans and the collegians, are to belong to it and do already, Napoleon
thus forming his adult staff out of his juvenile staff.

In fact, it is for himself that he works, for himself alone, and not
at all for the Church whose ascendancy would prejudice his own; much
better, in private conversation, he declares that he had wished
to supplant it: his object in forming the University is first and
especially "to take education out of the hands of the priests.[6154]
They consider this world only as a vehicle for transportation to the
other," and Napoleon wants "the vehicle filled with good soldiers for
his armies," good functionaries for his administrations, and good,
zealous subjects for his service.--And, thereupon, in the decree which
organizes the University, and following after this phrase written for
effect, he states the real and fundamental truth.

"All the schools belonging to the University shall take for the basis of
their teaching loyalty to the Emperor, to the imperial monarchy to which
the happiness of the people is confided and to the Napoleonic dynasty
which preserves the unity of France and of all liberal ideas proclaimed
by the Constitutions."

In other terms, the object is to plant civil faith in the breasts
of children, boys and young men, to make them believe in the beauty,
goodness and excellence of the established order of things, to
predispose their minds and hearts in favor of the system, to adapt
them to this system,[6155] to the concentration of authority and to the
centralization of services, to uniformity and to "falling into line"
(encadrement), to equality in obeying, to competition, to enthusiasm,
in short, to the spirit of the reign, to the combinations of the
comprehensive and calculating mind which, claiming for itself and
appropriating for its own use the entire field of human action, sets up
its sign-posts everywhere, its barriers, its rectilinear compartments,
lays out and arranges its racecourses, brings together and introduces
the runners, urges them on, stimulates them at each stage, reduces their
soul to the fixed determination of getting ahead fast and far, leaving
to the individual but one motive for living, that of the desire to
figure in the foremost rank in the career where, now by choice and now
through force, he finds himself enclosed and launched.[6156]

For this purpose, two sentiments are essential with adults and therefore
with children:

The first is the passive acceptance of a prescribed regulation, and
nowhere does a rule applied from above bind and direct the whole life by
such precise and multiplied injunctions as under the University régime.
School life is circumscribed and marked out according to a rigid,
unique system, the same for all the colleges and lycées of the Empire,
according to an imperative and detailed plan which foresees and
prescribes everything even to the minutest point, labor and rest of mind
and of body, material and method of instruction, class-books, passages
to translate or to recite, a list of fifteen hundred volumes for each
library with a prohibition against introducing another volume into it
without the Grand-Master's permission, hours, duration, application
and sessions of classes, of studies, of recreations and of promenades
causing the premeditated stifling of native curiosity, of spontaneous
inquiry, of inventive and personal originality, both with the masters
and still more, with the scholars. This to such an extent that one
day, under the second Empire, a minister, drawing out his watch, could
exclaim with satisfaction,

"At this very time, in such a class, all the scholars of the Empire are
studying a certain page in Virgil."

Well--informed, judicious, impartial and even kindly-disposed
foreigners,[6157] on seeing this mechanism which everywhere substitutes
for the initiative from below the compression and impetus from above,
are very much surprised. "The law means that the young shall never for
one moment be left to themselves; the children are under their masters'
eyes all day" and all night. Every step outside of the regulations is
a false one and always arrested by the ever-present authority. And, in
cases of infraction, punishments are severe; "according to the gravity
of the case,[6158] the pupils will be punished by confinement from three
days to three months in the lycée or college, in some place assigned to
that purpose; if fathers, mothers or guardians object to these measures,
the pupil must be sent home and can no longer enter any other college
or lycée belonging to the university, which, as an effect of university
monopoly, thereafter deprives him of instruction, unless his parents are
wealthy enough to employ a professor at home. "Everything that can be
effected by rigid discipline is thus obtained[6159] and better, perhaps,
in France than in any other country," for if, on leaving the lycée,
young people have lost a will of their own, they have acquired "a
love of and habits of subordination and punctuality" which are lacking
elsewhere.

Meanwhile, on this narrow and strictly defined road, whilst the
regulation supports them, emulation pushes them on. In this respect, the
new university corps, which, according to Napoleon himself, must be a
company of "lay Jesuits," resumes to its advantage the double process
which its forerunners, the former Jesuits, had so well employed
in education. On the one hand, constant direction and incessant
watchfulness; on the other hand, the appeal to amour-propre and to the
excitements of parades before the public. If the pupil works hard, it is
not for the purpose of learning and knowing, but to be the first in his
class; the object is not to develop in him the need of truthfulness and
the love of knowledge, but his memory, taste and literary talent; at
best, the logical faculty of arrangement and deduction, but especially
the desire to surpass his rivals, to distinguish himself, to shine, at
first in the little public of his companions, and next, at the end of
the year, before the great public of grown-up men. Hence, the weekly
compositions, the register of ranks and names, every place being
numbered and proclaimed; hence, those annual and solemn awards of prizes
in each lycée and at the grand competition of all lycées, along with
the pomp, music, decoration, speeches and attendance of distinguished
personages. The German observer testifies to the powerful effect of a
ceremony of this kind[6160]:

"One might think one's self at the play, so theatrical was it;"

and he notices the oratorical tone of the speakers, "the fire of their
declamation," the communication of emotion, the applause of the public,
the prolonged shouts, the ardent expression of the pupils obtaining the
prizes, their sparkling eyes, their blushes, the joy and the tears of
the parents. Undoubtedly, the system has its defects; very few of the
pupils can expect to obtain the first place; others lack the spur and
are moreover neglected by the master. But the élite make extraordinary
efforts and, with this, there is success. "During the war times," says
again another German, "I lodged a good many French officers who knew one
half of Virgil and Horace by heart." Similarly, in mathematics, young
people of eighteen, pupils of the Polytechnic School, understand very
well the differential and integral calculus, and, according to the
testimony of an Englishman,[6161] "they know it better than many of the
English professors."




V. Military preparation and the cult of the Emperor.

This general preparation is specified and directed by Napoleon as a
policy, and, as he specially needs soldiers, the school, in his hands,
becomes the vestibule of the barracks. Right away the institution
received a military turn and spirit, and this form, which is essential
to him, becomes more and more restricted. In 1805, during four
months,[6162] Fourcroy, ordered by the Emperor, visits the new lycées
"with an inspector of reviews and a captain or adjutant-major, who
everywhere gives instruction in drill and discipline." The young have
been already broke in; "almost everywhere," he says on his return, "I
saw young people without a murmur or reflection obey even younger and
weaker corporals and sergeants who had been raised to a merited rank
through their good behavior and progress. He himself, although a
liberal, finds reasons which justify to the legislative body this
unpopular practice;[6163] he replies to the objections and alarm of the
parents "that it is favorable to order, without which there are no good
studies," and moreover "it accustoms the pupils to carrying and using
arms, which shortens their work and accelerates their promotion on being
summoned by the conscription to the service of the State." The tap of
the drum, the attitude in presenting arms, marching at command, uniform,
gold lace, and all that, in 1811, becomes obligatory, not only for the
lycées and colleges, but again, and under the penalty of being closed,
for private institutions.[6164] At the end of the Empire, there were in
the departments which composed old France 76,000 scholars studying under
this system of stimulation and constraint. "Our masters," as a
former pupil is to say later on, "resembled captain-instructors, our
study-rooms mess--rooms, our recreations drills, and our examinations
reviews."[6165] The whole tendency of the school inclines it towards the
military and merges therein on the studies being completed--sometimes,
even, it flows into it before the term is over. After 1806,[6166] the
anticipated conscriptions take youths from the benches of the philosophy
and rhetoric classes. After 1808, ministerial circulars[6167] demand of
the lycées boys (des enfants de bonne volonté), scholars of eighteen and
nineteen who "know how to manoeuvre," so that they may at once be made
under-officers or second-lieutenants; and these the lycées furnish
without any difficulty by hundreds. In this way, the beardless volunteer
entering upon the career one or two years sooner, but gaining by this
one or two grades in rank.--"Thus," says a principal[6168] of one of the
colleges, "the brain of the French boy is full of the soldier. As far as
knowledge goes there is but little hope of it, at least under existing
circumstances. In the schools, says another witness of the reign,[6169]
"the young refuse to learn anything but mathematics and a knowledge of
arms. I can recall many examples of young lads of ten or twelve
years who daily entreated their father and mother to let them go with
Napoleon."--In those days, the military profession is evidently the
first of all, almost the only one. Every civilian is a pékin, that is
to say an inferior, and is treated as such.[6170] At the door of the
theatre, the officer breaks the line of those who are waiting to get
their tickets and, as a right, takes one under the nose of those who
came before him; they let him pass, go in, and they wait. In the café,
where the newspapers are read in common, he lays hold of them as if
through a requisition and uses them as he pleases in the face of the
patient bourgeois.

The central idea of this glorification of the army, be it understood, is
the worship of Napoleon, the supreme, unique, absolute sovereign of the
army and all the rest, while the prestige of this name is as great, as
carefully maintained, in the school as in the army. At the start, he put
his own free scholars (boursiers) into the lycées and colleges, about
3000 boys[6171] whom he supports and brings up at his own expense, for
his own advantage, destined to become his creatures, and who form the
uppermost layer of the school population; about one hundred and fifty of
these scholarships to each lycée, first occupants of the lycée and still
for a long time more numerous than their paying comrades, all of a more
or less needy family, sons of soldiers and functionaries who live on the
Emperor and rely on him only, all accustomed from infancy to regard
the Emperor as the arbiter of their destiny, the special, generous and
all-powerful patron who, having taken charge of them now, will also take
charge of them in the future. A figure of this kind fills and occupies
the entire field of their imagination; whatever grandeur it already
possesses it here becomes still more grand, colossal and superhuman.
At the beginning their enthusiasm gave the pitch to their
co-disciples;[6172] the institution, through its mechanism, labors to
keep this up, and the administrators or professors, by order or through
zeal, use all their efforts to make the sonorous and ringing chord
vibrate with all the more energy. After 1811, even in a private
institution,[6173] "the victories of the Emperor form almost the only
subject on which the imagination of the pupils is allowed to exercise
itself." After 1807,[6174] at Louis le Grand, the prize compositions
are those on the recent victory of Jena. "Our masters themselves," says
Alfred de Vigny, "unceasingly read to us the bulletins of the Grande
Armée, while cries of Vive l'Empereur interrupted Virgil and Plato." In
sum, write many witnesses,[6175] Bonaparte desired to bestow on French
youths the organization of the "Mamelukes," and he nearly succeeded.
More exactly and in his own words, "His Majesty[6176] desired to realize
in a State of forty millions of inhabitants what had been done in Sparta
and in Athens.--" But," he is to say later, "I only half succeeded.
That was one of my finest conceptions";[6177] M. de Fontanes and the
other university men did not comprehend this or want to comprehend it.
Napoleon himself could give only a moment of attention to his school
work, his halting-spells between two campaigns;[6178] in his absence,
"they spoiled for him his best ideas"; "his executants "never perfectly
carried out his intentions. "He scolded, and they bowed to the storm,
but not the less continued on in the usual way." Fourcroy kept too much
of the Revolution in mind, and Fontanes too much of the ancient régime;
the former was too much a man of science, and the latter too much a
man of letters; with such capacities they laid too great stress on
intellectual culture and too little on discipline of the feelings. In
education, literature and science are "secondary" matters; the essential
thing is training, an early, methodical, prolonged, irresistible
training which, through the convergence of every means--lessons,
examples and habits--inculcates "principles," and lastingly impresses
on young souls "the national doctrine," a sort of social and political
catechism, the first article of which commands fanatical docility,
passionate devotion, and the total surrender of one's self to the
Emperor.[6179]


*****

[Footnote 6101: (and obviously the aim of all other dictatorships.
(SR.))]

[Footnote 6102: Pelet de la Lozère, 161. (Speech by Napoleon to the
Council of State, March 11, 1806.)]

[Footnote 6103: Our last son entered the French School system at the age
of 5 in 1984 and his school record followed him from school to school
until he left 13 years later with his terminal exam, the Baccalaureat.
(SR.)]

[Footnote 6104: What a wonderful procedure, it was to be copied and
used by all the dominant rulers of the 20th century. Taine's book is,
however, not to be let into immature hands, so no wonder it was hardly
ever referred to by those who had profited by it. (SR.)]

[Footnote 6105: A. de Beauchamp, Recueil des lois et réglements sur
l'enseignement supérior, 4 vol. ( (Rapport of Fourcroy to the Corps
Législatif, May 6, 1806.) "How important it is... that the mode of
education admitted to be the best should add to this advantage, that
of being uniform for the whole Empire, teaching the same knowledge,
inculcating the same principles on individuals who must live together in
the same society, forming in some way but one body, possessing but
one mind, and all contributing to the public good through unanimity of
sentiment and action."]

[Footnote 6106: Pelet de la Lozère, 154.]

[Footnote 6107: A. de Beauchamp, ibid. (Decree of March 7,
1808.)--Special and collateral schools which teach subjects not taught
in the lycées, for example the living languages, which are confined
to filling a gap, and do not compete with the lycées, are subject to
previous authorization and to university pay.]

[Footnote 6108: Pelet de la Lozère, p. 170. (Session of the Council of
State, March 20, 1806).]

[Footnote 6109: Quicherat, "Histoire de Sainte-Barbe," III., 125.]

[Footnote 6110: A. de Beauchamp, ibid. (Decrees of March 17, 1808, arts
103 and 105, of Sep. 17, 1808, arts. 2 and 3 of Novem. 15, 1801, arts.
54, 55 and 56.) "Should any one publicly teach and keep a school without
the Grand-Master's consent, he will be officially prosecuted by our
imperial judges, who will close the school.... He will be brought before
the criminal court and condemned to a fine of from one hundred to two
hundred francs, without prejudice to greater penalties, should he be
found guilty of having directed instruction in a way contrary to order
and to the public interest."--Ibid., art. 57. (On the closing of schools
provided with prescribed authority.)]

[Footnote 6111: A. de Beauchamp, ibid. (Decree of Sep. 17, 1808, arts.
27, 28, 29, 30, and act passed April 7, 1809.)]

[Footnote 6112: Id., ibid. (Decrees of March 17, 1808, art. 134; of Sep.
17, 1808, arts. 25 and 26; of Nov.15, 1811, art. 63).]

[Footnote 6113: Ambroise Rendu, "Essai sur l'instruction publique," 4
vols., 1819, I., 221. (Notice to M. de Fontanes, March 24, 1808. "The
university undertakes all public institutions, and must strive to have
as few private institutions as possible.]

[Footnote 6114: Eugène Rendu, "Ambroise Rendu et l'Université de France"
(1861), pp.25, 26. (Letter of the Emperor to Fourcroy, Floreal 3, year
XIII, ordering him to inspect the lycées and Report of Fourcroy at
the end of four months.) "In general, the drum. the drill and military
discipline keep the parents in most of the towns from sending their
children to the lycée.... Advantage is taken of this measure to make
parents believe that the Emperor wants only to make soldiers." Ibid.
(Note of M. de Champagny, Minister of the Interior, written a few months
later.) "A large half of the heads (of the lycée) or professors is, from
a moral point of view, completely indifferent. One quarter, by their
talk, their conduct, their reputation, exhibit the most dangerous
character in the eyes of the youths... The greatest fault of the
principals is their lack of religious spirit, religious zeal.... There
are not more than two or three lycees in which this may be seen. Hence
the removal of the children by the parents which is attributed to
political prejudices; hence the rarity of paying pupils; hence the
discredit of the lycées. In this respect opinion is unanimous."]

[Footnote 6115: "Histoire du Collége Louis le Grand," by Esmond,
emeritus censor, 1845, p.267 "Who were the assistant-teachers? Retired
subaltern officers who preserved the coarseness of the camp and knew of
no virtue but passive obedience.... The age at which scholarships were
given was not fixed, the Emperor's choice often falling on boys of
fifteen or sixteen, who presented themselves with habits already formed
out of a bad education and so ignorant that one was obliged to assign
them to the lowest classes, along with children."--Fabry, "Mémoires pour
servir à l'histoire de l'instruction publique depuis 1789," I., 391.
"The kernel of boarding-scholars, (holders of scholarships) was
furnished by the Prytanée. Profound corruption, to which the military
régime gives an appearance of regularity, a cool impiety which conforms
to the outward ceremonies of religion as to the movements of a drill,...
steady tradition has transmitted this spirit to all the pupils that have
succeeded each other for twelve years."]

[Footnote 6116: Fabry, ibid., vol. II.,12, and vol. III., 399.]

[Footnote 6117: Decree of Nov.15, 1811, articles 15, 16, 22.]

[Footnote 6118: Quicherat, ibid., III.. 93 to 105.--Up to 1809, owing
to M. de Fontane's toleration, M. de Lanneau could keep one half of his
pupils in his house under the name of pupils in preparatory classes, or
for the lectures in French or on commerce; nevertheless, he was obliged
to renounce teaching philosophy. In 1810, he is ordered to send all his
scholars to the lycée within three months. There were at this date 400
scholars in Sainte-Barbe.]

[Footnote 6119: Decree of Nov.15, 1811, articles 1, 4, 5, 9, 17 to 19
and 24 to 32.--"Procès-verbaux des séances du conseil de l'Université
impériale." (Manuscripts in the archives of the Ministry of Public
Instruction, furnished by M. A. de Beauchamp), session of March 12,
1811, note of the Emperor communicated by the Grand-Master. "His Majesty
requires that the following arrangement be added to the decree presented
to him: Wherever there is a lycée, the Grand-Master will order private
institutions to be closed until the lycée has all the boarders it can
contain." The personal intervention of Napoleon is here evident;
the decree starts with him; he wished it at once more rigorous, more
decidedly arbitrary and prohibitive.]

[Footnote 6120: Quicherat, ibid., III.,95-105.--Ibid., 126. After the
decree of November 15, 1811, threatening circulars follow each other
for fifteen months and always to hold fast or annoy the heads of
institutions or private schools. Even in the smallest boarding-schools,
the school exercises must be announced by the drum and the uniform worn
under penalty of being shut up]

[Footnote 6121: Ibid., III., 42.--At Sainte-Barbe, before 1808, there
were various sports favoring agility and flexibility of the body,
such as running races, etc. All that is suppressed by the imperial
University; it does not admit that anything can be done better or
otherwise than by itself.]

[Footnote 6122: Decree of March 17, 1808, article 38. Among "the bases
of teaching," the legislator prescribes "obedience to the statutes the
object of which is the uniformity of instruction."]

[Footnote 6123: Quicherat, III., 128.]

[Footnote 6124: "The Modern Régime," I., 164.]

[Footnote 6125: See, for a comprehension of the full effect of this
forced education, "Les Mécontens" by Mérimée, the rôle of Lieutenant
Marquis Edward de Naugis.]

[Footnote 6126: "Recueil," by A. de Beauchamp; Report by Fourcroy, April
20, 1802: "The populations which have become united with France
and which, speaking a different language and accustomed to foreign
institutions, need to abandon old habits and refashion themselves on
those of their new country, cannot find at home the essential means for
giving their sons the instruction, the manners and the character which
should amalgamate them with Frenchmen. What destiny could be more
advantageous for them and, at the same time, what a resource for the
government, which desires nothing so much as to attach new citizens to
France!"]

[Footnote 6127: "Journal d'un déténu de 1807 à 1814" (I vol., 1828, in
English), p.167. (An account given by Charles Choderlos de Laclos, who
was then at La Flèche.]

[Footnote 6128: Pelet de la Lozère, ibid., pp.162, 163.167. (Speeches by
Napoleon to the Council of State, sessions of Feb. 10, March 1, 11 and
20, April 7, and May 21 and 29, 1806.)]

[Footnote 6129: Napoleon himself said this: "I want a corporation, not
of Jesuits whose sovereign is in Rome, but Jesuits who have no
other ambition but to be useful and no other interest but the public
interest."]

[Footnote 6130: This intention is formally expressed in the law. (Decree
of March 17, 1808, art. 30.) "Immediately after the formation of
the imperial university, the order of rank shall be followed in the
appointment of functionaries, and no one can be assigned a place who has
not passed through the lowest. The situations will then afford a career
which offers to knowledge and good behavior the hope of reaching the
highest position in the imperial university."]

[Footnote 6131: Pelet de la Lozère, ibid.]

[Footnote 6132: "Procès-verbaux des séances du conseil de l'Université."
(In manuscript.) Memoir of February 1, 1811, on the means for developing
the spirit of the corporation in the University. In this memoir,
communicated to the Emperor, the above motive is alleged.]

[Footnote 6133: Pelet de la Lozère.]

[Footnote 6134: I can imagine the effect this description of Napoleon's
genius and inventive spirit must have had on Lenin when he lived and
studied in Paris and forged his plans for a communist state, a world
revolution, an annihilation of the existing order and the creation of a
new (and better) one. (SR.)]

[Footnote 6135: Decree of March 17, 1808, arts. 101, 102.]

[Footnote 6136: In any pre-revolutionary society, authority must be
undermined, women introduced whenever it can lessen the efficiency of
the organization. But once the revolution has won, then Lenin's dictum
about entrusting men of administrative talent with the full authority
of the dictatorship of the proletariat is to be followed. As Taine was
translated into German, Hitler is likely, directly or indirectly to have
studied Napoleon. Hitler's "führerprincip" a principle which gave the
Nazi society its terrible efficiency was probably the result. (SR.)]

[Footnote 6137: Decree of March 20, 1808, articles 40-46.]

[Footnote 6138: For example, act of March 31, 1812, On leaves of
absence.--Cf. the regulations of April 8, 1810, for the "École de la
Maternité," titres ix, x and xi). In this strict and special instance we
see plainly what Napoleon meant by "the police" of a school.]

[Footnote 6139: Pelet de la Lozère, Ibid.]

[Footnote 6140: It seems to me probable that an aspiring revolutionary
like Hitler, Lenin, Stalin or Trotsky) would attempt to copy Napoleon's
once he had successfully taken power inside first the party and later
the state. To enhance the dissolution of a democracy the opposite
system, that is tenure irrespective of performance, the right to operate
militant trade unions and to conduct strikes, would be demanded for all
government employees. (SR.)]

[Footnote 6141: Decree of March 17, 1808, articles 47 and 48.]

[Footnote 6142: Decree of Nov. 15, 1811, articles 66 and 69.]

[Footnote 6143: Procès-verbaux et papiers du conseil supérior de
l'Université (in manuscript).--(Two memoirs submitted to the Emperor,
Feb. 1, 1811, on the means of strengthening the discipline and spirit of
the body in the University.)--The memoir requests that the sentences of
the university authorities be executable on the simple exequatur of the
courts; it is important to diminish the intervention of tribunals and
prefects, to cut short appeals and pleadings; the University must have
full powers and full jurisdiction on its domain, collect taxes from
its taxpayers, and repress all infractions of those amenable to its
jurisdiction. (Please not the exequatur is a French ordnance by which
the courts gives a decision by a third party or an umpire executory
force. SR.)]

[Footnote 6144: "Statut sur l'administration, l'ensignement et la police
de l'École normale," March 30, 1810, title II, articles 20-23.]

[Footnote 6145: Taine entered in L'Ecole Normale in October 1848, first
in his year, having written an essay in philosophy (in Latin) with the
title: Si animus cum corpore extinguitur, quid sit Deus? Quid homo? Quid
societas? Quid philosophia? (If the soul dies with the body what happens
to God? Man? Society? Philosophy?) And an essay in French imagining that
he was Voltaire writing to his English friend Cedeville pretending to
give his impressions on England. When he had arrived on 30 October 1848
Taine wrote to Cornélis de Witt: "Here I am in the convent and prisoner
for three years." (SR.)]

[Footnote 6146: I note, however, that the École Normale Superior
produced Taine, and it seemed to have had the same effect upon him as
by boarding school and its similar regime upon me, namely of making me
informed and rebellious. I have also noted that the most uninteresting
and smug young people I have met have followed school systems like that
of the United States where no great effort is demanded but the peer
pressure helps to produce ignorant, self-satisfied students. (SR.)]

[Footnote 6147: Villemain, "Souvenirs contemporaines," vol. I., 137-156.
("Une visite à l'École normale en 1812," Napoleon's own words to M. de
Narbonne.) "Tacitus is a dissatisfied senator, an Auteuil grumbler, who
revenges himself, pen in hand, in his cabinet. His is the spite of the
aristocrat and philosopher both at once.... Marcus Aurelius is a sort
of Joseph II., and, in much larger proportions, a philanthropist and
sectarian in commerce with the sophists and ideologues of his time,
flattering them and imitating them.... I like Diocletian better."--"...
Public education lies in the future and in the duration of my work after
I am gone."]

[Footnote 6148: Decree of March 17, 1808, art. 110 and the following.]

[Footnote 6149: Circular of Nov. 13, 1813.]

[Footnote 6150: Decree of March 17, 1808, article 38.]

[Footnote 6151: Pelet de la Lozere, ibid., 158.]

[Footnote 6152: Id., ibid., 168. (Session of March 20, 1806.)]

[Footnote 6153: Hermann Niemeyer, "Beobactungen auf einer
Deportation-Reise nach Frankreich im J. 1807" (Halle, 1824),
II.,353.--Fabry, "Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire de l'instruction
publique," III., 120. (Documents and testimony of pupils showing that
religion in the lycées is only ceremonial practice.)--Id., Riancey,
"Histoire de l'instruction publique," II.,378. (Reports of nine
chaplains in the royal colleges in 1830 proving that the same spirit
prevailed throughout the Restoration: "A boy sent to one of these
establishments containing 400 pupils for the term of eight years has
only eight or ten chances favoring the preservation of his faith; all
the others are against him, that is to say, out of four hundred chances,
three hundred and ninety risk his being a man with no religion."]

[Footnote 6154: Fabry, ibid., III., 175. (Napoleon's own words to a
member of his council.)--Pelet de la Lozère, ibid., 161: "I do not want
priests meddling with public education."--167: "The establishment of
a teaching corps will be a guarantee against the re-establishment of
monks. Without that they would some day come back."]

[Footnote 6155: Fabry, ibid, III., 120. (Abstract of the system of
lycées by a pupil who passed many years in two lycées.) Terms for board
900 francs, insufficiency of food and clothing, crowded lectures and
dormitories, too many pupils in each class, profits of the principal who
lives well, gives one grand dinner a week to thirty persons, deprives
the dormitory, already too narrow, of space for a billiard-table, and
takes for his own use a terrace planted with fine trees. The censor, the
steward, the chaplain, the sub-director do the same, although to a less
degree. The masters are likewise as poorly fed as the scholars. The
punishments are severe, no paternal remonstrance or guidance, the
under-masters maltreated on applying the rules, despised by their
superiors and without any influence on their pupils.--"Libertinage,
idleness self-interest animated all breasts, there being no tie of
friendship uniting either the masters to the scholars nor the pupils
amongst themselves."]

[Footnote 6156: Finding myself in charge of a numerous staff of
technicians, artisans, operators and workers hired by the United Nations
to serve a military mission in Lebanon I was faced with motivating
everyone, not only when they would become eligible for promotion, but
also during the daily humdrum existence. I one day coined the phrase
that "everyone wants to be important" and tried to make them feel so by
insisting that all tasks, even the most humble had to be done well. I
gave preference to seniority by giving the most senior man the chance to
prove himself once a higher post fell vacant. (SR.)]

[Footnote 6157: Hermann Niemeyer, "Beobachtungen," etc., II.,350. "A
very worthy man, professor in one of the royal colleges, said to me:
'What backward steps we have been obliged to take! How all the pleasure
of teaching, all the love for our art, has been taken away from us by
this constraint!'"]

[Footnote 6158: Id., ibid., II.,339.--"Decree of November 15, 1811 art.
17."]

[Footnote 6159: Id., ibid., II.,353.]

[Footnote 6160: Hermann Niemeyer, ibid., 366, and following pages. On
the character, advantages and defects of the system, this testimony of
an eye-witness is very instructive and forms an almost complete picture.
The subjects taught are reduced to Latin and mathematics; there is
scarcely any Greek, and none of the modern languages, hardly a tinge of
history and the natural sciences, while philology is null; that which
a pupil must know of the classics is their "contents and their spirit"
(Geist und Inhalt).--Cf. Guizot, "Essai sur l'histoire et l'état actuel
de l'instruction publique," 1816, p.103.]

[Footnote 6161: "Travels in France during the Years 1814 and 1815"
(Edinburgh, 1816), vol. I., p. 152.]

[Footnote 6162: "Ambroise Rendu et l'Université de France," by E. Rendu
(1861), pp. 25 and 26. (Letter of the Emperor, Floréal 3, year XIII, and
report by Fourcroy.)]

[Footnote 6163: "Recueil," etc., by de Beauchamp, I., 151. (Report to
the Corps Législatif by Fourcroy, May 6, 1806.)]

[Footnote 6164: "Procès-verbaux et papiers" (manuscripts) of the
superior council of the University, session of March 12, 1811, note by
the Emperor communicated by the Grand-Master: "The Grand-Master will
direct that in all boarding-schools and institutions which may come into
existence, the pupils shall wear a uniform, and that everything shall go
on as in the lycées according to military discipline." In the decree in
conformity with this, of Nov. 15, 1811, the word military was omitted,
probably because it seemed too crude; but it shows the thought
behind it, the veritable desire of Napoleon.--Quicherat," Histoire de
Sainte-Barbe," III., 126. The decree was enforced "even in the smallest
boarding-schools."]

[Footnote 6165: Testimony of Alfred de Vigny in "Grandeur et Servitude
militaires." Same impression of Alfred de Musset in his "Confession d'un
enfant du siècle."]

[Footnote 6166: Quicherat, ibid., p.126.]

[Footnote 6167: "The Modern Régime," I. (Laff. I. p. 550.)]

[Footnote 6168: Hermann Niemeyer, ibid., I., 153.]

[Footnote 6169: "Travels in France," etc., II.,123. (Testimony of a
French gentleman.) "The rapid destruction of population in France caused
constant promotions, and the army became the career which offered the
most chances. It was a profession for which no education was necessary
and to which all had access. There, Bonaparte never allowed merit to go
unrecognized."]

[Footnote 6170: Véron, "Mémoires d'un bourgeois de Paris," I., 127 (year
1806).]

[Footnote 6171: Guizot, ibid., pp.59 and 61.--Fabry, "Mémoires pour
servir à l'histoire de l'instruction publique," III., 102. (On the
families of these favorites and on the means made use of to obtain these
scholarships.)--Jourdain, "le Budget de l'instruction publique (1857)",
p. 144.--In 1809, in the 36 lycées, there are 9,068 pupils, boarding
and day scholars, of whom 4,199 are boursiers. In 1811, there are 10,926
pupils, of whom 4,008 are boursiers. In 1813, there are 14,992
pupils, of whom 3,500 are boursiers. At the same epoch, in private
establishments, there are 30,000 pupils.]

[Footnote 6172: Fabry, ibid., II.,391 (1819). (On the peopling of the
lycées and colleges.) "The first nucleus of the boarders was furnished
by the Prytanée.... Tradition has steadily transmitted this spirit to
all the pupils that succeeded each other for the first twelve years."--
Ibid., III., 112 "The institution of lycees tends to creating a race
inimical to repose, eager and ambitious, foreign to the domestic
affections and of a military and adventurous spirit."]

[Footnote 6173: Quicherat, ibid., III., 126.]

[Footnote 6174: Hermann Niemeyer, ibid., II.,350.]

[Footnote 6175: Fabry, ibid., III., 109-112.]

[Footnote 6176: Ambroise Rendu, "Essai sur l'instruction publique,"
(1819), I., 221. (Letter of Napoleon to M. de Fontanes, March 24,
1808.)]

[Footnote 6177: "Mémorial," June 17, 1816.]

[Footnote 6178: Pelet de la Lozère, ibid., 154, 157, 159.]

[Footnote 6179: "Mémorial," June 17, 1816. "This conception of the
University by Napoleon must be taken with another, of more vast
proportions, which he sets forth in the same conversation and which
clearly shows his complete plan. He desired "the military classing of
the nation," that is to say five successive conscriptions, one above the
other. The first, that of children and boys by means of the University;
the second, that of ordinary conscripts yearly and effected by the
drawing by lot; the third, fourth and fifth provided by three standards
of national guard, the first one comprising young unmarried men and held
to frontier service, the second comprising men of middle age, married
and to serve only in the department, and the third comprising aged men
to be employed only in the defense of towns--in all, through these three
classes, two millions of classified men, enrolled and armed, each
with his post assigned him in case of invasion. "In 1810 or 1811 up to
fifteen or twenty drafts of this" proposal "was read to the council of
State. The Emperor, who laid great stress on it, frequently came back
to it." We see the place of the University in his edifice: from ten to
sixty years, his universal conscription was to take, first, children,
then adults, and, with healthy persons, the semi-invalids, as, for
instance, Cambacérès, the arch-chancellor, gross, impotent, and, of all
men, the least military. "There is Cambacérès," says Napoleon, "who must
be ready to shoulder his gun if danger makes it necessary.... Then you
will have a nation sticking together like lime and sand, able to defy
time and man." There is constant repugnance to this by the whole Council
of State, "marked disfavor, mute and inert opposition.... Each member
trembled at seeing himself classed, transported abroad," and, under
pretext of internal defense, used for foreign wars. "The Emperor,
absorbed with other projects, saw this plan vanish."]




CHAPTER II.




I. Primary Instruction.

     Primary instruction.--Additional and special restrictions on
     the teacher.--Ecclesiastical supervision.--Napoleon's
     motives.--Limitation of primary instruction.--Ignorant
     monks preferred.--The imperial catechism.

Such is secondary education, his most personal, most elaborate, most
complete work; the other two stories of the educational system, under
and over, built in a more summary fashion, are adapted to the middle
story and form, the three together, a regular monument, of which the
architect has skillfully balanced the proportions, distributed the
rooms, calculated the service and designed the facade and scenic effect.

"Napoleon," says a contemporary adversary,[6201] "familiar with power
only in its most absolute form, military despotism, tried to partition
France in two categories, one composed of the masses, destined to fill
the ranks of his vast army, and disposed, through the brutishness which
he was willing to maintain; to passive obedience and fanatical devotion;
the other, more refined by reason of its wealth, was to lead the former
according to the views of the chief who equally dominated both, for
which purpose it was to be formed in schools where, trained for a
servile and, so to say, mechanical submission, it would acquire relative
knowledge, especially in the art of war and with regard to a wholly
material administration; after this, vanity and self-interest were to
attach it to his person and identify it, in some way with his system of
government."

Lighten this gloomy picture one degree and it is true.[6202] As to
primary instruction, there was no State appropriation, no credit
inscribed on the budget, no aid in money, save 25,000 francs, allotted
in 1812, to the novices of the Frères Ignorantins and of which they
received but 4,500 francs;[6203] the sole mark of favor accorded to the
small schools is an exemption from the dues of the University.[6204] His
councillors, with their habits of fiscal logic, proposed to exact
this tax here as elsewhere; a shrewd politician, he thinks that its
collection would prove odious and he is bound not to let his popularity
suffer among villagers and common people; it is 200,000 francs a year
which he abstains from taking from them; but here his liberalities in
behalf of primary instruction stop. Let parents and the communes take
this burden on themselves, pay its expenses, seek out and hire the
teacher, and provide for a necessity which is local and almost domestic.
The government, which invites them to do this, will simply furnish the
plan, that is to say, a set of rules, prescriptions and restrictions.

At first, there is the authorization of the prefect, guardian of the
commune, who, having invited the commune to found a school, has
himself, through a circular, given instructions to this end, and who
now interferes in the contract between the municipal council and the
teacher, to approve of or to rectify its clauses--the name of the
employee, duration of his engagement, hours and seasons for his classes,
subjects to be taught, the sum total and conditions of his pay in money
or in kind; the school grant must be paid by the commune, the school
tax by the pupils, the petty fees which help pay the teacher's living
expenses and which he gets from accessory offices such as mayor's clerk,
clock-winder, sexton, bell-ringer and chorister in the church[6205]--At
the same time, and in addition, there is the authorization of the
rector; for the small as well as the average or larger schools are
included in the University;[6206] the new master becomes a member of
the teaching body, binds himself and belongs to it by oath, takes
upon himself its obligations and submissions, comes under the special
jurisdiction of the university authorities, and is inspected, directed
and controlled by them in his class and outside of his class.--The
last supervision, still more searching and active, which close by,
incessantly and on the spot, hovers over all small schools by order
and spontaneously, is the ecclesiastical supervision. A circular of the
Grand-Master, M. de Fontanes,[6207] requests the bishops to instruct
"messieurs les curés of their diocese to send in detailed notes on their
parish schoolmasters;" "when these notes are returned," he says,
"please address them to me with your remarks on them; according to these
indications I will approve of the instructor who merits your suffrage
and he will receive the diploma authorizing him to continue in his
functions. Whoever fails to present these guarantees will not receive a
diploma and I shall take care to replace him with another man whom you
may judge to be the most capable."[6208]

If Napoleon thus places his small schools under ecclesiastical
oversight, it is not merely to conciliate the clergy by giving it the
lead of the majority of souls, all the uncultivated souls, but because,
for his own interests, he does not want the mass of the people to think
and reason too much for themselves.

"The Academy inspectors,"[6209] says the decree of 1811, "will see that
the masters of the primary schools do not carry their teaching beyond
reading, writing and arithmetic."

Beyond this limit, should the instructor teach a few of the children the
first elements of Latin or geometry, geography or history, his school
becomes secondary; it is then ranked as a boarding-school, while its
pupils are subjected to the university recompense, military drill,
uniform, and all the above specified exigencies; and yet more--it must
no longer exist and is officially closed. A peasant who reads, writes
and ciphers and who remains a peasant need know no more, and, to be a
good soldier, he need not know as much; moreover, that is enough, and
more too, to enable him to become an under and even a superior officer.
Take, for instance, Captain Coignet, whose memoirs we have, who, to be
appointed a second-lieutenant, had to learn to write and who could never
write other than a large hand, like young beginners.--The best masters
for such limited instruction are the Brethren of the Christian Schools
and these, against the advice of his counselors, Napoleon supports:

"If they are obliged," he says, by their vows to refrain from other
knowledge than reading, writing and the elements of arithmetic,... it is
that they may be better adapted to their destiny."[6210] "In comprising
them in the University, they become connected with the civil order of
things and the danger of their independence is anticipated."

Henceforth, "they no longer have a stranger or a foreigner for their
chief." "The superior-general at Rome has renounced all inspection over
them; it is understood that in France their superior-general will reside
at Lyons."[6211] The latter, with his monks, fall into the hands of
the government and come under the authority of the Grand-Master. Such
a corporation, with the head of it in one's power, is a perfect
instrument, the surest, the most exact, always to be relied on and which
never acts on one side of, or beyond, the limits marked out for it.
Nothing pleases Napoleon more, who,

* in the civil order of things, wants to be Pope;

* who builds up his State, as the Pope his Church, on old Roman
tradition;

* who, to govern from above, allies himself with ecclesiastical
authority;

* who, like Catholic authorities, requires drilled executants and
regimental maneuvers, only to be found in organized and special bodies
of men.[6212]

The general inspectors of the University give to each rector the
following instructions as a watchword "Wherever the Brethren of the
Christian Schools can be found, they shall," for primary teaching, "be
preferred to all others."[6213] Thus, to the three classes of subjects
taught, a fourth must be added, one not mentioned by the legislator
in his law, but which Napoleon admits, which the rectors and prefects
recommend or authorize, and which is always inscribed in the contract
made between the commune and the instructor. The latter, whether layman
or 'frère ignorantin,' engages to teach, besides "reading, writing
and decimal arithmetic," "the catechism adopted by the Empire."
Consequently, as the first communion (of the pupil) draws near, he
is careful, for at least two years, to have his scholars learn the
consecrated text by heart, and to recite this text aloud on their
benches, article by article; in this way, his school becomes a branch of
the Church and, hence, like the Church, a reigning instrumentality. For,
in the catechism adopted for the Empire, there is one phrase carefully
thought out, full and precise in its meaning, in which Napoleon has
concentrated the quintessence of his political and social doctrine
and formulated the imperative belief assigned by him as the object of
education. The seven or eight hundred thousand children of the lower
schools recite this potent phrase to the teacher before reciting it to
the priest:

"We especially owe to Napoleon I., our Emperor, love, respect,
obedience, fidelity, military service, and the dues (tributs) prescribed
for the preservation and defense of the Empire and the throne.... For it
is he whom God has raised up in times of difficulty, to restore
public worship and the holy religion of our forefathers, and to be its
protector."[6214]




II. Higher Education.

     Superior instruction.--Characters and conditions of
     scientific universities.--Motives for opposition to them.
     --In what respect adverse to the French system.--How he
     replaces them.--Extent of secondary instruction.--Meets all
     wants in the new social order of things.--The careers it
     leads to.--Special schools.--Napoleon requires them
     professional and practical.--The law school.

Superior instruction, the most important of all, remains. For, in this
third and last stage of education, the minds and opinions of young
people from eighteen to twenty-four years of age are fully formed. It is
then that, already free and nearly ripe, these future occupants of busy
careers, just entering into practical life, shape their first general
ideas, their still hazy and half-poetic views of things, their premature
and foregone conclusions respecting man, nature, society and the great
interests of humanity.

If we want them to arrive at sound conclusions, a good many scales must
be prepared for them, and these scales must be substantial, convergent,
each with its own rungs of the ladder superposed, each with an
indication of its total scope, each expressly designating the absent,
doubtful, provisional or simply future and possible rungs, because they
are in course of formation or on trial.[6215]--Consequently, these must
all be got together in a designated place, in adjacent buildings,
not alone the body of professors, the spokes-men of science,
but collections, laboratories and libraries which constitute the
instruments. Moreover, besides ordinary and regular courses of
lectures, there must be lecture halls where, at appointed hours, every
enterprising, knowledgeable person with something to say may speak to
those who would like to listen. Thus, a sort of oral encyclopedia is
organized, an universal exposition of human knowledge, a permanent
exposition constantly renewed and open, to which its visitors, provided
with a certificate of average instruction as an entrance ticket, will
see with their own eyes, besides established science that which is under
of formation, besides discoveries and proofs the way of discovering and
proving, namely the method, history and general progress, the place of
each science in its group, and of this group its place in the general
whole. Owing to the extreme diversity of subjects taught there will be
room and occupation for the extreme diversity of intelligences. Young
minds can choose for themselves their own career, mount as high as their
strength allows, climb up the tree of knowledge each on his own side,
with his own ladder, in his own way, now passing from the branches to
the trunk and again from the trunk to the branches, now from a remote
bough to the principal branch and from that again back to the trunk.

And more than this, thanks to the co-ordination of lessons well
classified, there is, for each course of lectures, the means for
arriving at full details in all particulars; the young students can
talk amongst themselves and learn from each other, the student of moral
science from the student of the natural sciences, the latter from the
student of the chemical or physical sciences, and another from the
student of the mathematical sciences. Bearing still better fruit, the
student, in each of these four circumscriptions, derives information
from his co-disciples lodged right and left in the nearest compartments,
the jurist from the historian, from the economist, from the philologist,
and reciprocally, in such a way as to profit by their impressions and
suggestions, and enable them to profit by his. He must have no other
object in view for three years, no rank to obtain, no examination to
undergo, no competition for which to make preparations, no outward
pressure, no collateral preoccupation, no positive, urgent and personal
interest to interfere with, turn aside or stifle pure curiosity. He pays
something out of his own pocket for each course of lectures he attends;
for this reason, he makes the best choice he can, follows it up to the
end, takes notes, and comes there, not to seek phrases and distraction,
but actualities and instruction, and get full value for his money. It is
assumed that knowledge is an object of exchange, foodstuffs stockpiled
and delivered by the masters; the student who takes delivery is
concerned that it is of superior quality, genuine and nutritious;
the masters, undoubtedly, through amour-propre and conscience, try to
furnish it this; but it is up to the student himself to fetch it, just
what he wants, in this particular storehouse rather than in others, from
this or that lecture-stand, official or not. To impart and to acquire
knowledge for itself and for it alone, without subordinating this end
to another distinct and predominant end, to direct minds towards this
object and in this way, under the promptings and restraints of supply
and demand, to open up the largest field and the freest career to the
faculties, to labor, to the preferences of the thinking individual,
master or disciple,--such is (or ought to be) the spirit of the
institution. And, evidently, in order that it may be effective according
to this spirit, it needs an independent, appropriate body, that is to
say, autonomous, sheltered against the interference of the State, of
the Church, of the commune, of the province, and of all general or
local powers, provided with rules and regulations, made a legal, civil
personage, with the right to buy, sell and contract obligations, in
short proprietorship.

This is no chimerical plan, the work of a speculative, calculating
imagination, which appears well and remains on paper. All the
universities of the middle ages were organized according to this type.
It found life and activity everywhere and for a long time; the twenty-
two universities in France previous to the Revolution, although
disfigured, stunted and desiccated, preserved many of its features,
certain visible externals, and, in 1811,[6216] Cuvier, who had just
inspected the universities of lower Germany, describes it as he found
it, on the spot, confined to superior instruction, but finished and
complete, adapted to modern requirements, in full vigor and in full
bloom.

There is no room in the France to which Cuvier returns for institutions
of this stamp; they are excluded from it by the social system which has
prevailed.--First of all, public law, as the Revolution and Napoleon
comprehended it and enacted it, is hostile to them;[6217] for it sets
up the principle that in a State there must be no special corporations
permanent, under their own control, supported by mort main property,
acting in their own right and conducting a public service for their own
benefit, especially if this service is that of teaching; for the State
has taken this charge upon itself, reserved it for itself and assumed
the monopoly of it; hence, the unique and comprehensive university
founded by it, and which excludes free, local and numerous universities.
Thus, in its essence, it is the self-teaching State and not
self-teaching science; thus defined, the two types are contradictory;
not only are the two bodies different, but again the two spirits are
incompatible; each has an aim of its own, which is not the aim of the
other. In a special sense, the use to which the Emperor assigns his
university is contrary to the aim of the German universities; it is
founded for his own advantage, that he may possess "the means for
shaping moral and political opinions." With this object in view it
would be wrong for him to allow several establishments within reach of
students in which they would be directed by science alone; it is certain
that, in many points, the direction here given to youth would poorly
square with the rigid, uniform, narrow lines in which Napoleon wishes
to confine them. Schools of this kind would get to be centers of
opposition; young men thus fashioned would become dissenters; they would
gladly hold personal, independent opinions alongside, or outside, of
"the national doctrine," outside of Napoleonic and civil orthodoxy;
and worse still, they would believe in their opinions. Having studied
seriously and at first sources, the jurist, the theologian, the
philosopher, the historian, the philologist, the economist might perhaps
cherish the dangerous pretension of considering himself competent even
in social matters; being a Frenchman, he would talk with assurance and
indiscretion; he would be much more troublesome than a German; it would
soon be necessary to send him to Bicêtre or to the Temple.[6218]--In
the present state of things, with the exigencies of the reign, and even
in the interests of the young themselves, it is essential that superior
instruction should be neither encyclopedic nor very profound.

Were this a defect, Frenchmen would not perceive it; they are accustomed
to it. Already, before 1789, the classes in the humanities were
generally completed by the lesson in philosophy. In this course logic,
morals and metaphysics were taught. Here the young persons handled,
adjusted, and knocked about more or less adroitly the formula on God,
nature, the soul and science they had learned by rote. Less scholastic,
abridged, and made easy, this verbal exercise has been maintained in
the lycées.[6219] Under the new régime, as well as under the old one, a
string of abstract terms, which the professor thought he could explain
and which the pupil thought he understood, involves young minds in a
maze of high, speculative conceptions, beyond their reach and far beyond
their experience, education and years. Because pupils play with words,
they suppose that they grasp and master ideas, which fancy deprives
them of any desire to obtain them. Consequently, in the great French
establishment, young people hardly remark the lack of veritable
Universities; a liberal, broad spirit of inquiry is not aroused in them;
they do not regret their inability to have covered the cycle of varied
research and critical investigation, the long and painful road which
alone surely leads to profound general conceptions, those grand ideas
which are verifiable and solidly based.--And, on the other hand,
their quick, summary mode of preparation suffices for the positive and
appreciable needs of the new society. The problem is to fill the gaps
made in it by the Revolution and to provide the annual and indispensable
quota of educated youth. Now, after as before the Revolution, this is
understood as being all who have passed through the entire series
of classes; under the system, subject to the drill in Latin and
mathematics. The young men have here acquired the habit of using clear,
connected ideas, a taste for close reasoning, the art of condensing a
phrase or a paragraph, an aptitude for attending to the daily business
of a worldly, civil life, especially the faculty of carrying on a
discussion, of writing a good letter, even the talent for composing
a good report or memorial.[6220] A young man with these skills,
some scraps of natural philosophy, and with still briefer notions of
geography and history, has all the general, preliminary culture he
needs, all the information he requires for aspiring to one of the
careers called liberal. The choice rests with himself; he will be
what he wants to be, or what he is able to be--professor, engineer,
physician, member of the bar, an administrator or a functionary. In each
of his qualifications he renders an important service to the public, he
exercises an honorable profession; let him be competent and expert, that
concerns society. But that alone is all that society cares about; it is
not essential that it should find in him additionally an erudite or a
philosopher.

* Let him be competent and worthy of confidence in his particular
profession,

* let him know how to teach classes or frame a course of lectures, how
to build a bridge, a bastion, an edifice, how to cure a disease, perform
an amputation, draw up a contract, manage a case in court, and give
judgment;

* let the State, for greater public convenience, organize, check, and
certify this special capacity,

* let it verify this by examinations and diploma,

* let it make of this a sort of coin of current value, duly minted and
of proper standard;

* let this be protected against counterfeits, not only by its
preferences but again by its prohibitions, by the penalties it enacts
against the illegal practice of pharmacy and of medicine, by the
obligations it imposes on magistrates, lawyers and ministerial officials
not to act until obtaining this or that grade,--

such is what the interest of society demands and what it may exact.
According to this principle, the State creates special schools, (today
in 1998 called Grande Ecoles[6221]), and, through the indirect monopoly
which it possesses, it fills them with listeners; henceforth, these are
to furnish the youth of France with superior education.[6222]

From the start, Napoleon, as logician, with his usual lucidity and
precision, lays it down that they shall be strictly practical and
professional. "Make professors (régents) for me," said he one day
in connection with the Ecole normale, "and not littérateurs, wits or
seekers or inventors in any branch of knowledge." In like manner says he
again,[6223]

"I do not approve of the regulation requiring a man to be bachelor
(bachelier) in the sciences before he can be a bachelor in the medical
faculty; medicine is not an exact and positive science, but a science
of guess and observation. I should place more confidence in a doctor
who had not studied the exact sciences than in one who possessed them.
I preferred M. Corvisart to M. Hallé, because M. Hallé belongs to the
Institute. M. Corvisart does not even know what two equal triangles are.
The medical student should not be diverted from hospital practice, from
dissections and studies relating to his trade."

There is the same subordination of science to the professions, the same
concern for immediate or near application, the same utilitarian tendency
to aim at a public function or a private career, the same contraction of
studies in the law school, in that order of truths of which Montesquieu,
a Frenchman, fifty years before, had first seized the entire body,
marked the connections and delineated the chart. At issue are the laws
and the "spirit of laws," unwritten or written, by which diverse human
societies live, of whatever form, extent and kind,--the State, commune,
Church, school, army, agricultural or industrial workshop, tribe
or family. These, existing or fossilized, are realities, open to
observation like plants or animals. One may, the same as with animals
and plants, observe them, describe them, compare them together, follow
their history from first to last, study their organization, classify
them in natural groups, disengage the distinctive and dominant
characteristics in each, note its ambient surroundings and ascertain
the internal or external conditions, or "necessary relationships," which
determine its failure or its bloom. For men who live together in society
and in a State, no study is so important; it alone can furnish them with
a clear, demonstrable idea of what society and the State are; and it is
in the law schools that this capital idea must be sought by an educated
student body. If they do not find it there, they invent one to suit
themselves. As 1789 drew near, the antiquated, poor, barren, teaching
of law, fallen into contempt and almost null,[6224] offered no sound,
accredited doctrine which could impose itself on young minds, fill their
empty minds and prevent the intrusion of utopic dreams. And intrude it
did: in the shape of Rousseau's anti-social Utopia, in his anarchical
and despotic Social Contract. To hinder it from returning, the best
thing to do was not to repeat the same mistake, not to leave the lodging
empty, to install in it a fixed occupant beforehand, and to see that
this fixed occupant, which is science, may at all times represent its
title of legitimate proprietor, its method analogous to that of the
natural sciences, its studies of detail from life and in the texts, its
restricted inductions, its concordant verifications, its progressive
discoveries. This in order that, confronting every chance system and
without these titles, minds may of themselves shut their doors, or only
open them provisionally, and always with a care to make the intruder
present his letters of credit: here we have the social service rendered
by the instruction in Law as given in the German mode, as Cuvier had
just described it. Before 1789, in the University of Strasbourg, in
France, it was thus given; but, in this condition and to this extent, it
is not suitable under the new régime, and still less than under the old
one.

Napoleon, in his preparation of jurists, wants executants and not
critics; his faculties must furnish him with men able to apply and not
to give opinions on his laws. Hence, in the teaching of the law, as he
prescribes it, there must be nothing of history, of political economy or
of comparative law; there must be no exposition of foreign legislation,
of feudal or custom law, or of canon law; no account of the
transformations which governed public and private law in Rome down to
the Digest[6225] and, after that, in France, down to the recent codes.
But nothing on remote origins, on successive forms and the diverse and
ever-changing conditions of labor, property and the family; nothing
which, through the law, exposes to view and brings us in contact with
the social body to which it is applied. That is to say, this or that
active and human group, with its habits, prejudices, instincts, dangers
and necessities; nothing but two dry, rigid codes, like two aerolites
fallen from the sky ready-made and all of a piece at an interval
of fourteen centuries. At first, the Institutes,[6226] "by cutting
out[6227] what is not applicable to our legislation and replacing these
matters by a comparison with much finer laws scattered through other
books of Roman law," similar to the classes in the humanities, where
Latin literature is reduced to the finest passages of the classic
authors. Next, the French code, with the comments on it due to the
decisions of the court of appeals and the court of cassation.[6228] All
the courses of lectures of the school shall be obligatory and arranged
as a whole, or tacked on to each other in a compulsory order; each step
the student takes shall be counted, measured and verified every three
months by a certificate, and each year by an examination; at these
examinations there shall be no optional matters, no estimate of
collateral studies or those of complimentary or superior importance.
The student finds no attraction or benefit in studies outside of
the programme, and, in this programme he finds only official texts,
explained by the bill of fare, one by one, with subtlety, and patched
together as well as may be by means of distinctions and interpretations,
so as to provide the understood solution in ordinary cases and a
plausible solution in disputed cases, in other terms, a system of
casuistry.[6229]

And this is just the education which suits the future practitioner. As
a celebrated professor of the second Empire says,[6230] "our young
graduates need a system of instruction which enables them to pass
without perplexity or discouragement from the school to the halls of
justice;" to have the 2281 articles of the civil code at their fingers'
ends, also the rest, hundreds and thousands of them, of the other four
codes; to find at once in relation to each case the set of pertinent
articles, the general rule, neither too broad nor too narrow, which fits
the particular case in question. As for law taken in itself and as a
whole, they have none of that clear, full conception of it to which a
comprehensive and curious mind aspires. "I know nothing of the civil
code," said another professor, older and in closer proximity with the
primitive institution, "I teach only the Code Napoléon." Accordingly,
with his clear-sightedness and his practical and graphic imagination,
Napoleon could perceive in advance the future and certain products of
his machine, the magistrates in their bonnets, seated or standing in
their court-rooms, with the lawyers in their robes facing them pleading,
and, farther on, the great consumers of stamped papers in their bureaus
encumbered with files of documents with the attorneys and notaries
engaged in drawing them up; elsewhere, prefects, sub-prefects, prefect
councilors, government commissioners and other officials, all at work
and doing pretty well, all of them useful organs but mere organs of the
law. The chances were small, fewer than under the ancient régime, for
an erudite and independent thinker, a Montesquieu, to issue from that
school.




III. On Science, Reason and Truth.

     Crowning point of the university edifice.--Faith based on
     criticism.--How it binds men together and forms a lay
     Church.--Social power of this Church.--Scientific and
     literary authorities.--How Napoleon enrolls them.--The
     Institute, an appendage of the State.

Everywhere else, the direction and reach of superior instruction are
similar. In the Faculties of Science and Literature, much more than in
the Faculties of Medicine and of Law, the principal employment of the
professors is the awarding of grades.--They likewise confer the titles
of bachelor, licentiate and doctor; but the future bachelor is not
prepared by them; the lycée furnishes him for the examination, fresh
from its benches; they have then no audience but future licentiates,
that is to say a few schoolmasters and a licentiate at long intervals
who wants to become a doctor in order to mount upward into the
university hierarchy. Besides these, occasional amateurs, nearly all of
ripe age, who wish to freshen their classic souvenirs, and idlers who
want to kill time, fill the lecture-room. To prevent empty benches the
lecture course becomes a conférence d'Athenée, which is pleasant enough
or sufficiently general to interest or, at least, not to repel people
of society.[6231] Two establishments remain for teaching true science to
the workers who wish to acquire it; who, in the widespread wreck of the
ancient régime have alone survived in the Museum of Natural History,
with its thirteen chairs, and the College of France, with nineteen. But
here, too, the audience is sparse, mixed, disunited and unsatisfactory;
the lectures being public and free, everybody enters the room and leaves
as he pleases during the lecture. Many of the attendants are idlers who
seek distraction in the tone and gestures of the professors, or birds
of passage who come there to warm themselves in winter and to sleep in
summer. Nevertheless, two or three foreigners and half a dozen Frenchmen
thoroughly learn Arabic or zoology from Silvestre de Sacy, Cuvier or
Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire. That answers the purpose; they are quite enough,
and, elsewhere too in the other branches of knowledge. All that is
required is a small élite of special and eminent men--about one hundred
and fifty in France in the various sciences,[6232] and, behind them,
provisionally, two or three hundred others, their possible successors,
competent and designated beforehand by their works and celebrity to fill
the gaps made by death in the titular staff as these occur. The latter,
representatives of science and of literature, provide the indispensable
adornment of the modern State. But, in addition to this, they are the
depositaries of a new force, which more and more becomes the principal
guide, the influential regulator and even the innermost motor of human
action. Now, in a centralized State, no important force must be left to
itself; Napoleon is not a man to tolerate the independence of this one,
allowing it to act apart and outside of limitations; he knows how to
utilize it and turn it to his own advantage. He has already grasped
another force of the same order but more ancient, and, in the same way,
and with equal skill, he also takes hold of the new one.

In effect, alongside of religious authority, based on divine revelation
and belonging to the clergy, there is now a lay authority founded on
human reason, which is exercised by scientists, erudites, scholars and
philosophers. They too, in their way, form a clergy, since they
frame creeds and teach a faith; only, their preparatory and dominant
disposition is not trust and a docile mind, but distrust and the need
of critical examination. With them, nearly every source of belief is
suspicious. At bottom, among the ways of acquiring knowledge, they
accept but two, the most direct, the simplest, the best tested, and
again on condition that one proves the other, the type of the first
being that process of reasoning by which we show that two and two make
four, and the second that experience by which we demonstrate that heat
above a certain degree melts ice, and that cold below a certain degree
freezes water. This is the sole process that is convincing; all others,
less and less sure in proportion as they diverge from it, possess only
a secondary, provisional and contestable value, that which it confers on
them after verification and check.--Let us accordingly avail ourselves
of this one, and not of another, to express, restrain or suspend
our judgment. So long as the intellect uses it and only it, or its
analogues, to affirm, set aside or doubt, it is called reason, and the
truths thus obtained are definitive acquisitions. Acquired one by one,
the truths thus obtained have for a long time remained scattered, in
the shape of fragments; only isolated sciences have existed or bits of
science. About the middle of the eighteenth century these separate parts
became united and have formed one body, a coherent system. Out of this,
formerly called philosophy, that is to say a view of nature as a whole,
consisting of perfect order on lasting foundations, a sort of universal
network which, suddenly enlarged, stretches beyond the physical world
to the moral world, taking in man and men, their faculties and their
passions, their individual and their collective works, various human
societies, their history, customs and institutions, their codes and
governments, their religions, languages, literatures and fine arts,
their agriculture, industries, property, the family and the rest.[6233]
Then also, in each natural whole the simultaneous or successive parts
are connected together; a knowledge of their mutual ties is important,
and, in the spiritual order of things, one accomplishes this, as in
the material order, through scientific distrust, through critical
examination, by credible experimentation and process.[6234]

Undoubtedly, in 1789, the work in common on this ground had resulted
only in false conceptions; but this is because instead of credible
processes another hasty, plausible, popular, risky and deceptive method
was applied. People wanted to go fast, conveniently, directly, and, for
guide, accepted unreason under the name of reason. Now, in the light of
disastrous experience, there was a return to the narrow, stony, long and
painful road which alone leads, both, in speculation, to truth and, in
practice, to salvation.--Besides, this second conclusion, like the first
one, was due to recent experience. Henceforth it was evident that, in
political and social matters, ideas quickly descend from speculation to
practice. When anybody talks to me about stones, plants, animals and the
stars I must, to listen, be interested in these; if anybody talks to me
about man and society, it suffices that I am a man and a member of that
society; for then it concerns myself, my nearest, daily, most sensitive
and dearest interests; by virtue of being a tax-payer and a subject, a
citizen and an elector, a property-owner or a proletarian, a consumer or
a producer, a free-thinker or a Catholic, a father, son or husband,
the doctrine is addressed to me; to affect me it has only to be within
reach, through interpreters and others that promulgate it.--This office
appertains to writers great or small, particularly to the educated who
possess wit, imagination or eloquence, a pleasing style, the art of
finding readers or of making themselves understood. Owing to their
interposition, a doctrine wrought out by the specialist or thinker
in his study, spreads around through the novel, the theatre and the
lecture-room, by pamphlets, the newspaper, dictionaries, manuals and
conversation, and, finally, by teaching itself. It thus enters all
houses, knocks at the door of each intellect, and, according as it works
its way more or less forcibly, contributes more or less effectively
to make or unmake the ideas and sentiments that adapt it to the social
order of things in which it is comprised.

In this respect it acts like positive religions; in its way and on many
accounts, it is one of them. In the first place, like religion, it is a
living, principal, inexhaustible fountain-head, a high central reservoir
of active and directing belief. If the public reservoir is not filled
by an intermittent flow, by sudden freshets, by obscure infiltrations
of the mystic faculty, it is regularly and openly fed by the constant
contributions of the normal faculties. On the other hand, confronting
faith, by the side of that beneficent divination which, answering the
demands of conscience and the emotions, fashions the ideal world and
makes the real world conform to this, it poses the testing process
which, analyzing the past and the present, disengages possible laws and
the probabilities of the future. Doctrine likewise has its dogmas, many
definitive and others in the way of becoming so, and hence a full and
complete conception of things, vast enough and clear enough, in spite of
what it lacks, to take in at once nature and humanity. It, too, gathers
its faithful in a great church, believers and semi believers, who,
consequently or inconsequently, accept its authority in whole or in
part, listen to its preachers, revere its doctors, and deferentially
await the decisions of its councils. Wide-spread, still uncertain and
lax under a wavering hierarchy, the new Church, for a hundred years
past, is steadily in the way of consolidation, of progressive ascendancy
and of indefinite extension. Its conquests are constantly increasing;
sooner or later, it will be the first of social powers. Even for the
chief of an army, even for the head of a State, even to Napoleon, it is
well to become one of its great dignitaries; the second title, in modern
society, adds a prestige to the first one: "Salary of His Majesty the
Emperor and King as member of the Institute, 1500 francs;" thus begins
his civil list, in the enumeration of receipts. Already in Egypt,
intentionally and for effect, he heads his proclamations with
"Bonaparte, commander-in chief, member of the Institute." "I am sure,"
he says, "that the lowest drummer will comprehend it!"

Such a body, enjoying such credit, cannot remain independent. Napoleon
is not content to be one of its members. He wants to hold it in his
grasp, have it at his own disposition, and use it the same as a member
or, at least, contrive to get effective control of it. He has reserved
to himself an equally powerful one in the old Catholic Church; he has
reserved to himself like equivalents in the young lay Church; and, in
both cases, he limits them, and subjects them to all the restrictions
which a living body can support. In relation to science and religion he
might repeat word for word his utterances in relation to religion and to
faith. "Napoleon has no desire to change the belief of his populations;
he respects spiritual matters; he wishes simply to dominate them without
touching them, without meddling with them; all he desires is to make
them square with his views, with his policy, but through the
influence of temporalities." To this end, he negotiated with the Pope,
reconstructed, as he wanted it, the Church of France, appointed bishops,
restrained and directed the canonical authorities. To this end, he
settles matters with the literary and scientific authorities, gets them
together in a large hall, gives them arm-chairs to sit in, gives by-laws
to their groups, a purpose and a rank in the State, in brief, he adopts,
remakes, and completes the "National Institute" of France.[6235]




IV. Napoleon's stranglehold on science.

     Hold of the government on the members of the Institute.--How
     he curbs and keeps them down.--Circle in which lay power may
     act.--Favor and freedom of the mathematical, physical and
     natural sciences.--Disfavor and restrictions on the moral
     sciences.--Suppression of the class of moral and political
     sciences.--They belong to the State, included in the
     imperial domain of the Emperor.--Measures against Ideology,
     philosophic or historic study of Law, Political Economy and
     Statistics.--Monopoly of History.

This "National Institute," is the Government's tool and an appendage of
the State. This is in conformity with the traditions of the old monarchy
and with the plans, sketched out and decreed by the revolutionary
assemblies,[6236] in conformity with the immemorial principle of French
law which enlarges the interference of the central power, not only in
relation to public instruction but to science, literature and the fine
arts. It is the State which has produced and shaped it, which has
given to it its title, which assigns it its object, its location,
its subdivisions, its dependencies, its correspondences, its mode of
recruitment, which prescribes its labors, its reports, its quarterly and
annual sessions, which gives it employment and defrays its expenses.
Its members receive a salary, and "the subjects elected[6237] must be
confirmed by the First Consul." Moreover, Napoleon has only to utter
a word to insure votes for the candidate whom he approves of, or to
blackball the candidate whom he dislikes. Even when confirmed by the
head of the State, an election can be cancelled by his successor; in
1816,[6238] Monge, Carnot, Guyton de Morveau, Grégoire, Garat, David and
others, sanctioned by long possession and by recognized merit, are to be
stricken off the list. By the same sovereign right, the State admits and
excludes them, the right of the creator over his creation, and, without
pushing his right as far as that, Napoleon uses it.

He holds the members of his Institute in check with singular rigidity,
even when, outside of the Institute and as private individuals, they
fail to observe in their writings the proper rules imposed on
every public body. The rod falls heavily on Jérôme de Lalande, the
mathematician and astronomer who continues the work of Montucla,
publicly and in a humiliating way, the blow being given by his
colleagues who are thus delegated for the purpose. "A member of
the Institute," says the imperial note,[6239] "well known for his
attainments, but now fallen into an infantile state, is not wise enough
to keep his mouth shut, and tries to have himself talked about, at one
time by advertisements unworthy of his old reputation as well as of the
body to which he belongs, and again by openly professing atheism, the
great enemy of all social organization." Consequently, the presidents
and secretaries of the Institute, summoned by the minister, notify the
Institute "that it must send to M. de Lalande and enjoin him not to
print anything, not cast a shadow in his old age over what he has
done in his vigorous days to obtain the esteem of savants." M. de
Chateaubriand, in the draft for his admission address, alluding to the
revolutionary role of his predecessor, Marie Chénier, observed that
he could eulogize him only as the man of letters,[6240] and, in the
reception committee, six out of twelve academicians had accepted the
draft. Thereupon, Fontanes, one of the twelve, prudently abstains from
going to Saint-Cloud. M. de Ségur, however, president of the committee,
he goes. In the evening, at the coucher, Napoleon advances to him before
the whole court and, in that terrifying tone of voice which, even today,
vibrates from the dead lines of the silent page,

"Sir," says he to him, "do the literary people really desire to set
France ablaze?... How dare the Academy speak of regicides?... I ought to
put you and M. de Fontanes, as Councillor of State and Grand-Master, in
Vincennes.... You preside over the second division of the Institute.
I order you to inform it that I will not allow politics at its
sessions.... If the class disobeys I will put an end to it as an
objectionable club!"

Thus warned, the members of the Institute remain within the circle
traced out for them and, for many, the circle is sufficiently large. Let
the first division of the Institute, in the mathematical, physical and
natural sciences, Lagrange, Laplace, Legendre, Carnot, Biot, Monge,
Cassini, Lalande, Burckardt and Arago, Poisson, Berthollet, Gay-Lussac,
Guyton de Morveau, Vauquelin, Thénard and Haüy, Duhamel, Lamarck,
Jussieu, Mirbel, Geoffroy-Saint-Hilaire and Cuvier, pursue their
researches; let Delambre and Cuvier, in their quarterly reports, sum up
and announce discoveries; let, in the second division of the Institute,
Volney, Destutt de Tracy, Andrieux, Picard, Lemercier and Chateaubriand,
if the latter desires to take part in its sittings, give dissertations
on language, grammar, rhetoric, rules of style and of taste; let, in the
third division of the Institute, Sylvestre de Sacy publish his Arabic
grammar; let Langlés continue his Persian, Indian and Tartar studies;
let Quatremère de Quincy, explaining the structure of the great
chryselephantine statues, reproduce conjecturally the surface of ivory
and the internal framework of the Olympian Jupiter; let D'Ansse de
Villoison discover in Venice the commentary of the Alexandrian critics
on Homer; let Larcher, Boissonade, Clavier, alongside of Coraÿ publish
their editions of the old Greek authors--all this causes no trouble,
and all is for the honor of the government. Their credit reflects on
the avowed promoter, the official patron and responsible director of
science, erudition and talent therefore, in his own interest, he favors
and rewards them. Laurent de Jussieu and Cuvier are titular councillors
of the University, Delambre is its treasurer, and Fontanes its
Grand-Master. Delille, Boissonade and Royer-Collard and Guizot teach in
the faculty of letters; Biot, Poisson, Gay-Lussac, Haüy, Thénard,
Brongniart, Geoffroy-Saint-Hilaire in the faculty of the sciences;
Monge, Berthollet, Fourier, Andrieux in the Ecole Polytechnique; Pinel,
Vauquelin, Jussieu, Richerand, Dupuytren in the Ecole de Médecine.
Fourcroy is councillor of State, Laplace and Chaptal, after having been
ministers, become senators; in 1813, there are twenty-three members of
the Institute in the Senate; the zoologist Lacépede is grand-chancellor
of the Legion of Honor; while fifty-six members of the Institute,
decorated with an imperial title, are chevaliers, barons, dukes, and
even princes.[6241]--This is even one more lien, admirably serving to
bind them to the government more firmly and to in-corporate them more
and more in the system. In effect, they now derive their importance
and their living from the system and the government; having become
dignitaries and functionaries they possess a password in this twofold
capacity; henceforth, they will do well to look upward to the master
before expressing a thought and to know how far the password allows them
to think.

In this respect, the First Consul's intentions are clear from the
very first day: In his reconstruction of the Institute[6242] he
has suppressed "the division of moral and political sciences," and
consequently the first four sections of this division, "analysis of
sensations and ideas, moral science, social science and legislation,
and political economy." He thus cuts off the main branch with its four
distinct branches, and what he keeps or tolerates he trims and grafts
or fastens on to another branch of the third class, that of the erudites
and antiquaries. The latter may very well occupy themselves with
political and moral sciences but only "in their relations with history,"
and especially with ancient history. General conclusions, applicable
theories, on account of their generality, to late events and to the
actual situation are unnecessary; even as applied to the State in the
abstract, and in the cold forms of speculative discussion, they are
forbidden. The First Consul, on the strength of this, in connection with
"Dernières vues de politique et de finances, published by Necker, has
set forth his exact rule and his threatening purpose:

"Can you imagine," says he to Roederer, "that any man, since I became
head of the State, could propose three sorts of government for France?
Never shall the daughter of M. Necker come back to Paris!"

She would then get to be a distinct center of political opinion while
only one is necessary, that of the First Consul in his Council of
State. Again, this council itself is only half competent and at best
consultative:

"You yourselves do not know what government is.[6243] You have no idea
of it. I am the only one, owing to my position, that can know what a
government is."

On this sphere, and everywhere on its undefined perimeter, afar, as far
away as his piercing eye can penetrate, no independent way of thinking
must be conceived or, especially, published.

In particular, the foremost and guiding science of the analysis of the
human understanding, pursued according to the methods and after the
examples furnished by Locke, Hume, Condillac and Destutt de Tracy,
ideology is forbidden.

"It is owing to ideology," he says,[6244] "to that metaphysical
obscurity which, employing its subtleties in trying to get at first
causes, seeks to base the legislation of a people on that foundation,
instead of appropriating laws to a knowledge of the human heart and the
lessons of history, that all the misfortunes of our beautiful France
must be attributed."

In 1806, M. de Tracy, unable to print his "Commentaire sur l'Esprit
des Lois" in France, sends it to the president of the United States,
Jefferson, who translates it into English, publishes it anonymously,
and has it taught in his schools.[6245] About the same date, the
republication of the "Traité d'économie-politique" of J.--B. Say is
prohibited, the first edition of which, published in 1804, was soon
exhausted.[6246] In 1808, all publications of local and general
statistics, formerly incited and directed by Chaptal, were interrupted
and stopped; Napoleon always demands figures, but he keeps them for
himself; if divulged they would prove inconvenient, and henceforth
they become State secrets. The same precautions and the same rigor
are extended to books on law, even technical, and against a "Précis
historique du droit Romain." "This work," says the censorship, "might
give rise to a comparison between the progress of authority under
Augustus and that going on under the reign of Napoleon, in such a way as
to produce a bad effect on public opinion."[6247] In effect, nothing
is more dangerous than history, for it is composed, not of general
propositions that are unintelligible except to the meditative, but of
particular facts accessible and interesting to the first one that comes
along.

For this reason, not only the science of sensations and of ideas,
philosophic law and comparative law, politics and moral law, the science
of wealth and statistics, but again, and especially, the history of
France, is a State affair, an object of government; for no object
affects the government more nearly; no study contributes so much towards
strengthening or weakening the ideas and impressions which shape public
opinion for or against him.[6248] It is not sufficient to superintend
this history, to suppress it if need be, to prevent it from being a poor
one; it must again be ordered, inspired and manufactured, that it may be
a good one.

"There is no work more important.[6249]... I do not count the expense
in this regard. It is even my intention to make the minister ensure that
this work is under my protection.."

Above all, the attitude of the authors who write should be made sure
of. "Not only must this work be entrusted to authors of real talent,
but again to attached men, who will present facts in this true light and
prepare healthy instruction by bringing history down to the year VIII."
But this instruction can be healthy only through a series of preliminary
and convergent judgments, insinuating into all minds the final approval
and well-founded admiration of the existing régime. Accordingly, the
historian must feel at each line" the defects of the ancient régime,
"the influence of the court of Rome, of confessional tickets, of the
Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, of the ridiculous marriage of Louis
XIV. with Madame de Maintenon, the perpetual disorder in the finances,
the pretensions of the parliament, the want of rules and leadership in
the administration,.. in such a way that one breathes on reaching the
epoch when one enjoys the benefits of that which is due to the unity of
the laws, administration and territory." The constant feebleness of
the government under Louis XIV, even, under Louis XV. and Louis XVI.,
"should inspire the need of sustaining the newly accomplished work
and its acquired preponderance." On the 18th of Brumaire (19-11-1799),
France came into port; the Revolution must be spoken of only as a final,
fatal and inevitable tempest.[6250] "When that work, well done and
written in a right direction, appears, nobody will have the will or the
patience to write another, especially when, far from being encouraged by
the police, one will be discouraged by it." In this way, the government
which, in relation to the young, has awarded to itself the monopoly
of teaching, awards to itself in relation to adults, the monopoly of
history.




V. On Censorship under Napoleon.

     Measures against writers so called and popularizers.
     --Censorship, control of theaters, publications and printing.
     --Extent and minuteness of the repression.--Persistency in
     direction and impulsion.--The logical completeness and
     beauty of the whole system his final object.--How he
     accomplishes his own destruction.

If Napoleon in this manner takes precautions against those who think, it
is only because their thoughts, should they be written down, might reach
the public,[6251] and only the sovereign alone has the right to talk in
public. Between writer and readers, every communication is intercepted
beforehand by a triple and quadruple line of defenses through which
a long, tortuous and narrow wicket is the only passage, and where
the manuscript, like a bundle of suspicious goods, is overhauled and
repeatedly verified after having obtained its free certificate and its
permit of circulation. Napoleon declares "the printing-office[6252] to
be an arsenal which must not be within the reach of everybody... It is
very important for me that only those be allowed to print who have the
confidence of the government. A man who addresses the public in print is
like the man who speaks in public in an assembly, and certainly no
one can dispute the sovereign's right to prevent the first comer from
haranguing the public."--On the strength of this, he makes publishing
a privileged, authorized and regulated office of the State. The writer,
consequently, before reaching the public, must previously undergo the
scrutiny of the printer and bookseller, who, both responsible, sworn
and patented, will take good care not to risk their patent, the loss of
their daily bread, ruin, and, besides this, a fine and imprisonment.--In
the second place, the printer, the bookseller and the author are obliged
to place the manuscript or, by way of toleration, the work as it goes
through the press, in the hands of the official censors;[6253] the
latter read it and make their weekly report to the general director
of publications; they indicate the good or bad spirit of the work,
the "unsuitable or forbidden passages according to circumstances,"
the intended, involuntary or merely possible allusions; they exact the
necessary suppressions, rectifications and additions. The publisher
obeys, the printers furnish proofs, and the author has submitted; his
proceedings and attendance in the bureaux are at end. He thinks himself
safe in port, but he is not.

Through an express reservation, the director-general always has the
right to suppress works, "even after they have been examined, printed
and authorized to appear." In addition to this, the minister of
the police,[6254] who, above the director-general, likewise has his
censorship bureau, may, in his own right, place seals on the sheets
already printed, destroy the plates and forms in the printing-office,
send a thousand copies of the "Germany" by Madame de Staël to the
paper-mill, "take measures to see that not a sheet remains," demand of
the author his manuscript, recover from the author's friends the two
copies he has lent to them, and take back from the director-general
himself the two copies for his service locked up in a drawer in
his cabinet.--Two years before this, Napoleon said to Auguste de
Staël,[6255]

"Your mother is not bad. She has intelligence, a good deal of
intelligence. But she is unaccustomed to any kind of discipline. She
would not be six months in Paris before I should be obliged to put her
in the Temple or at Bicêtre. I should be sorry to do this, because it
would make a noise and that would injure me in public Opinion."

It makes but little difference whether she abstains from talking
politics: "people talk politics in talking about literature, the fine
arts and morality, about everything in the world; women should busy
themselves with their knitting," and men keep silent or, if they do
talk, let it be on a given subject and in the sense prescribed.

Of course, the inspection of publications is still more rigorous and
more repressive, more exacting and more persistent.--At the theatre,
where the assembled spectators become enthusiastic through the quick
contagion of their sensibilities, the police cut out of the "Heraclius"
of Corneille and the "Athalie" of Racine[6256] from twelve to
twenty-five consecutive lines and patch up the broken passages as
carefully as possible with lines or parts of lines of their own.--On the
periodical press, on the newspaper which has acquired a body of readers
and which exercises an influence and groups its subscribers according to
an opinion, if not political, at least philosophic and literary,
there is a compression which goes even as far as utter ruin. From the
beginning of the Consulate,[6257] sixty out of seventy-three political
journals are suppressed; in 1811, the thirteen that still existed are
reduced to four and the editors-in-chief are appointed by the minister
of police. The property of these journals, on the other hand, is
confiscated, while the Emperor, who had taken it, concedes it, one
third to his police and the other two thirds to people of the court
or littérateurs who are his functionaries or his creatures. Under this
always aggravated system the newspapers, from year to year, become so
barren that the police, to interest and amuse the public, contrive a pen
warfare in their columns between one amateur of French music and one of
Italian music.

Books, almost as rigorously kept within bounds, are mutilated or
prevented from appearing.[6258] Chateaubriand is forbidden to reprint
his "Essay on Revolutions," published in London under the Directory. In
"L'Itinéraire de Paris à Jérusalem" he is compelled to cut out "a good
deal of declamation on courts, courtiers and certain features calculated
to excite misplaced allusions." The censorship interdicts the "Dernier
des Abencerrages," where" it finds too warm an interest in the Spanish
cause." One must read the entire register to see it at work and in
detail, to feel the sinister and grotesque minutia with which it pursues
and destroys, not alone among great or petty writers but, again,
among compilers and insignificant abbreviators, in a translation, in a
dictionary, in a manual, in an almanac, not only ideas but suggestions,
echoes, semblances and oversights in thinking, the possibilities of
awakening reflection and comparison:

* every souvenir of the ancient régime, this or that mention of Kléber
or Moreau, or a particular conversation of Sully and Henry IV.;

* "a game of loto,[6259] which familiarizes youth with the history
of their country," but which says too much about "the family of the
grand-dauphin of Louis XVI. and his aunts";

* the general work of the reveries of Cagliostro and of M. Henri de
Saint-Mesmin, very laudatory of the Emperor, excellent "for filling
the soul of Frenchmen with his presence, but which must leave out three
awkward comparisons that might be detected by the malevolent or the
foolish;"

* the "translation into French verse of several of David's psalms,"
which are not dangerous in Latin but which, in French, have the defect
of a possible application, through coincidence and prophecy, to the
Church as suffering, and to religion as persecuted;

and quantities of other literary insects hatched in the depths of
publication, nearly all ephemeral, crawling and imperceptible, but which
the censor, through zeal and his trade, considers as fearsome dragons
whose heads must be smashed or their teeth extracted.

After the next brood they prove inoffensive, and, better still, are
useful, especially the almanacs,[6260] "in rectifying on various points
the people's attitudes. It will probably be possible after 1812 to
control their composition, and they are filled with anecdotes, songs and
stories adapted to the maintenance of patriotism and of devotion to the
sacred person of His Majesty and to the Napoleonic dynasty."--To this
end, the police likewise improves, orders and pays for dramatic or lyric
productions of all kinds, cantatas, ballets, impromptus, vaudevilles,
comedies, grand-operas, comic operas, a hundred and seventy-six works
in one day, composed for the birth of the King of Rome and paid for in
rewards to the sum of 88,400 francs. Let the administration look to
this beforehand so as to raise up talent and have it bear good fruit.
"Complaints are made because we have no literature;[6261] it is the
fault of the minister of the interior. Napoleon personally and in the
height of a campaign interposes in theatrical matters. Whether far away
in Prussia or at home in France, he leads tragic authors by the hand,
Raynouard, Legouvé, Luce de Lancival; he listens to the first reading of
the "Mort d'Henri IV." and the "États de Blois." He gives to Gardel, a
ballet-composer, "a fine theme in the Return of Ulysses." He explains to
authors how dramatic effect should, in their hands, become a political
lesson; for lack of anything better, and waiting for these to comprehend
it, he uses the theatre the same as a tribune for the reading to the
spectators of his bulletins of the grand army.

On the other hand, in the daily newspapers, he is his own advocate, the
most vehement, the haughtiest, the most powerful of polemics. For a long
time, in the "Moniteur," he himself dictates articles which are known by
his style. After Austerlitz, he has no time to do this, but he inspires
them all and they are prepared under his orders. In the "Moniteur" and
other gazettes, it is his voice which, directly or by his spokesmen,
reaches the public; it alone prevails and one may divine what it utters!
The official acclaim of every group or authority in the State again
swell the one great, constant, triumphant adulatory hymn which, with
its insistence, unanimity and violent sonorities, tends to bewilder all
minds, deaden consciences and pervert the judgment.

"Were it open to doubt," says a member of the tribunate,[6262] "whether
heaven or chance gives sovereigns on earth, would it not be evident for
us that we owe our Emperor to some divinity?"

Another of the choir then takes up the theme in a minor key and thus
sings the victory of Austerlitz:

"Europe, threatened by a new invasion of the barbarians, owes its safety
to the genius of another Charles Martel."

Similar cantatas follow, intoned in the senate and lower house by
Lacépède, Pérignon and Garat, and then, in each diocese, by the bishops,
some of whom, in their pastoral letters, raise themselves up to the
technical considerations of military art, and, the better to praise the
Emperor, explain to their parishioners the admirable combinations of his
strategic genius.

And truly, his strategy is admirable, lately against Catholic ideas and
now against the secular mind. First of all, he has extended, selected
and defined his field of operations, and here is his objective point,
fixed by himself:

"On public affairs, which are my affairs in political, social and
moral matters, on history, and especially on actual history, recent
and modern, nobody of the present generation is to give any thought
but myself and, in the next generation, everybody will follow my
example."[6263]

The monopoly of education therefore belongs to him. He has introduced
military uniforms, discipline and spirit into all the public and private
secondary educational establishments. He has reduced and subjected the
ecclesiastical superintendence of primary education to the minimum. He
has removed the last vestige of regional, encyclopedic and autonomous
universities and substituted for these special and professional schools,
He has rendered veritable superior instruction abortive and stifled all
spontaneous and disinterested curiosity in youth.--Meanwhile ascending
to the source of secular knowledge, he has brought the Institute under
his influence. On this government tool he has effected the necessary
cuts, appropriated the credit to himself and imposed his favor or
disfavor on the masters of science and literature. Then, descending
from the source to the canals, constructing dams, arranging channels,
applying his constraints and impulsions, he has subjected science
and literature to his police, to his censorship and to his control
of publishing and printing. He has taken possession of all the
media--theatres, newspapers, books, pulpits and tribunes. He has
organized all these into one vast industry which he watches over and
directs, a factory of public attitudes which works unceasingly and in
his hands to the glorification of his system, reign and person.[6264]
Again here, he is found equal and similar to himself, a stern conqueror
making the most of his conquest to the last extreme, a shrewd operator
as meticulous as he is shrewd, as resourceful as he is consequent,
incomparable in adapting means to ends, unscrupulous in carrying them
out,[6265] fully satisfied that, through the constant physical pressure
of universal and crushing dread, all resistance would be overcome. He
is maintaining and prolonging the struggle with colossal forces, but
against a historic and natural force lying beyond his grasp, lately
against belief founded on religious instinct and on tradition, and
now against evidence engendered by realities and by the agency of the
testing process. Consequently, obliged to forbid the testing process, to
falsify things, to disfigure the reality, to deny the evidence, to lie
daily and each day more outrageously,[6266] to accumulate glaring
acts so as to impose silence, to arouse by this silence and by these
lies[6267] the attention and perspicacity of the public, to transform
almost mute whispers into sounding words and insufficient eulogies into
open protestations. In short, weakened by his own success and condemned
beforehand to succumb under his victories, to disappear after a short
triumph, Napoleon will leave intact and erect the indestructible rival
(science and knowledge) whom he would like to crush as an adversary but
turn to account as an instrument.[6268]


*****


[Footnote 6201: Lamennais, "Du Progrès de la Révolution," p.163.]

[Footnote 6202: Any socialist or social-nationalist leader would
undoubtedly have been impressed by Napoleon's ability to control and
dominate his admiring people and do their best to copy his methods.
(SR.)]

[Footnote 6203: "The Modern Régime," I., 247.]

[Footnote 6204: Pelet de la Lozère, p. 159.]

[Footnote 6205: Maggiolo, "Les Écoles en Lorraine avant et aprés 1789,"
3rd part, p.22 and following pages. (Details on the foundation or the
revival of primary schools in four departments after 1802.) Sometimes,
the master is the one who taught before 1789, and his salary is always
the same as at that time; I estimate that, in a village of an average
size, he might earn in all between 500 and 600 francs a year; his
situation improves slowly and remains humble and wretched down to the
law of 1833.--There are no normal schools for the education of primary
instructors except one at Strasbourg established in 1811 by the prefect,
and the promise of another after the return from Elba, April 27, 1815.
Hence the teaching staff is of poor quality, picked up here and there
haphazard. But, as the small schools satisfy a felt want, they increase.
In 1815, there are more than 22,000, about as many as in 1789; in the
four departments examined by M. Maggiolo there are almost as many as
there are communes.--Nevertheless, elsewhere, "in certain departments,
it is not rare to find twenty or thirty communes in one arrondissement
with only one schoolmaster.... One who can read and write is consulted
by his neighbors the same as a doctor."--("Ambroise Rendu," by E.
Rendu, p.107, Report of 1817.)]

[Footnote 6206: Decree of May 1, 1802, articles 2, 4 and 5.--Decree of
March 17, 1808, articles 5, 8 and 117.]

[Footnote 6207: E. Rendu, Ibid., pp.39 and 41]

[Footnote 6208: Id., ibid., 41. (Answers of approval of the bishops,
letter of the archbishop of Bordeaux, May 29, 1808.) "There are only too
many schools whose instructors neither give lessons nor set examples
of Catholicism or even of Christianity. It is very desirable that these
wicked men should not be allowed to teach."]

[Footnote 6209: Decree of Nov. 15, 1911, article 192.--Cf. the decree
of March 17, 1808, article 6. "The small primary schools are those
where one learns to read, write and cipher."--Ibid., § 3, article 5,
definition of boarding-schools and secondary communal schools. This
definition is rendered still more precise in the decree of Nov.15, 1811,
article 16.]

[Footnote 6210: Pelet de la Lozère, ibid. 175. (Words of Napoleon before
the Council of State, May 21, 180.)]

[Footnote 6211: Alexis Chevalier, "Les Frères des écoles chrétiennes
pendant la Révolution," 93. (Report by Portalis approved by the First
Consul, Frimaire 10, year XII.)]

[Footnote 6212: Like in the socialist and national-socialist parties and
trade unions which were to dominate the Western democracies throughout
the 20th century. (SR.)]

[Footnote 6213: "Ambroise Rendu," by E. Rendu, P.42.]

[Footnote 6214: D'Haussonville, "L'Église romaine et le premier Empire,"
II.,257, 266. (Report of Portalis to the Emperor, Feb. 13, 1806.)]

[Footnote 6215: Here Taine describes what today is often named as being
the "state of the art." (SR.)]

[Footnote 6216: Cuvier, "Rapport sur l'instruction publique dans les
nouveaux départements de la basse Allemagne, fait en exécution du décret
du 13 novembre 1810," pp. 4-8. "The principle and aim of each university
is to have courses of lectures on every branch of human knowledge if
there are any pupils who desire this... No professor can hinder his
colleague from treating the same subjects as himself; most of their
increase depends on the remuneration of the pupils which excites the
greatest emulation in their work."--The university, generally, is in
some small town; the student has no society but that of his comrades
and his professors; again, the university has jurisdiction over him and
itself exercises its rights of oversight and police. "Living in
their families, with no public amusements, with no distractions, the
middle-class Germans, especially in North Germany, regard reading, study
and meditation as their chief pleasures and main necessity; they
study to learn rather than to prepare themselves for a lucrative
profession.....The theologian scrutinizes even to their roots the truth
of morality and of natural theology. As to positive religion he wishes
to know its history and will study in the original tongue sacred
writings and all the languages relating to it that may throw light
on it; he desires to possess the details of Church history and become
acquainted with the usages of one century after another and the motives
of the changes which took place.--The law student is not content with a
knowledge of the code of his country; in his studies everything must be
related to the general principles of natural and political laws. He must
know the history of rights at all epochs, and, consequently, he has
need of the political history of nations; he must be familiar with the
various European constitutions, and be able to read the diplomas and
charters of all ages; the complex German legislation obliges him, and
will for a long time, to know the canon laws of both religious, of
feudal and public law, as well as of civil and criminal law; and if
the means of verifying at its sources all that is taught to him are not
afforded to him, he regards instruction as cut short and insufficient."]

[Footnote 6217: Louis Liard, "L'Enseignement supérieur en France,"
pp.307-309]

[Footnote 6218: Two prisons at the time.(SR.)]

[Footnote 6219: Comte Chaptal, "Notes."--Chaptal, a bright scholar,
studied in his philosophy class at Rodez under M. Laguerbe, a highly
esteemed professor. "Everything was confined to unintelligible
discussions on metaphysics and to the puerile subtleties of logic." This
lasted two years. Public discussions by the pupils were held three or
four hours long; the bishop, the noblesse, the full chapter attended
at these scholastic game-cock fights. Chaptal acquired a few correct
notions of geometry, algebra and the planetary system, but outside of
that, he says, "I got nothing out of it but a great facility in speaking
Latin and a passion for caviling."]

[Footnote 6220: Useful qualities for an administrator, anytime anywhere.
(SR.)]

[Footnote 6221: The Grande Ecoles today in 1998 produce first of all a
special type of engineer, a general engineer, specialist in nothing but
highly trained in mathematics, physics and chemistry. This education
is found, either in Ecole Centrale, mainly providing private enterprise
with engineers, and Polytechnique, mainly providing the State
with engineers. Specialist engineers, in construction, chemistry,
electronics, electricity etc. are produced by a few dozens prestigious
engineering or commercial schools which admit the students who have
completed 2 or 3 years of preparatory school and successfully competed
for the more popular schools. The special schools Taine talks about are
the precursors of a great many of the schools available in France
today. The principle of admission by concurs is still in use and produce
engineers who are able and willing to work hard, engineers who are
competent but often a bit proud and overly sure of themselves. (SR.)]

[Footnote 6222: Louis Liard, "Universités et Facultés," pp. 1-12.]

[Footnote 6223: Pelet de la Lozère, 176 (Session of the Council of
State, May 21, 1806).]

[Footnote 6224: Liard, "L'Enseignement supérieur en France," 71, 73. "In
the law schools, say the memorials of 1789, there is not the fiftieth
part of the pupils who attend the professors' lectures."--Fourcroy,"
Exposé des motifs de la loi concernant les Ecoles de droit," March 13,
1804. "In the old law faculties the studies were of no account, inexact
and rare, the lectures being neglected or not attended. Notes were
bought instead of being taken. Candidates were received so easily that
the examinations no longer deserved their name. Bachelor's degrees and
others were titles bought without study or trouble."--Cf the "Mémoires"
of Brissot and the "Souvenirs of d'Audifret-Pasquier," both of them
law students before 1789.--M. Léo de Savigny, in his recent work,
"Die französischen Rechts facultäten" (p.74 et seq.) refers to other
authorities not less decisive.]

[Footnote 6225: Reference is made to the synopsis of the Justitian code
of civil and other Roman laws. (SR.)]

[Footnote 6226: Treaty of law written Roman jurists under Justitian in
533. (SR.)]

[Footnote 6227: Decree of March 19, 1807, articles 42, 45.]

[Footnote 6228: The French Supreme Court. (SR.)]

[Footnote 6229: Courcelle-Seneuil, "Préparation à l'étude du droit"
(1887), pp. 5, 6 (on the teaching of law by the Faculty of Paris).]

[Footnote 6230: Léo de Savigny, ibid., p. 161.]

[Footnote 6231: Bréal, "Quelques mots sur l'instruction publique"
(1892), pp. 327, 341.--Liard, "Universités et Facultés," p.13 et seq.]

[Footnote 6232: Act of Jan.23, 1803, for the organization of the
Institute.]

[Footnote 6233: Voltaire's "Essai sur les moeurs" is of 1756; "L'Esprit
des Lois" by Montesquieu also, in 1754, and his "Traité des Sensations."
The "Emile" of Rousseau is of 1762; the "Traité de la formation
mécanique des langues," by de Brosses, is of 1765; the "Physiocratie" by
Quesnay appeared in 1768, and the "Encyclopédie" between 1750 and 1765.]

[Footnote 6234: On the equal value of the testing process in moral and
physical sciences, David Hume, in 1737, stated the matter decisively in
his "Essay on Human Nature." Since that time, and particularly since the
"Compte-rendu" by Necker, but especially in our time, statistics have
shown that the near or remote determining motives of human action are
powers (Grandeurs) expressed by figures, interdependent, and which
warrant, here as elsewhere, precise and numerical foresight.]

[Footnote 6235: What an impression Taine's description of Napoleon's
set-up must have had on Hitler, Lenin and, possibly Stalin and their
successors. (SR.)]

[Footnote 6236: Cf. Liard, "L'Enseignement supérieur en France," vol.
I., in full.--Also the law of Brumaire 3, year Iv. (Oct.25, 1795), on
the primitive organization of the Institute.]

[Footnote 6237: Decree of Jan. 23, 1803.]

[Footnote 6238: Decree of March 21, 1816]

[Footnote 6239: "Corréspondance de Napoléon," letters to M. de
Champagny, Dec.13, 1805, and Jan. 3, 1806. "I see with pleasure the
promise made by M. de Lalande and what passed on that occasion."]

[Footnote 6240: De Ségur, "Mémoires," III., 457.--"M. de Chateaubriand
composed his address with a good deal of skill; he evidently did not
wish to offend any of his colleagues without even excepting Napoleon.
He lauded with great eloquence the fame of the Emperor and exalted the
grandeur of republican sentiments." In explanation of and excusing his
silence and omissions regarding his regicide predecessor, he likened
Chénier to Milton and remarked that, for forty years, the same silence
had been observed in England with reference to Milton.]

[Footnote 6241: Edmond Leblanc, "Napoléon 1ere et ses institutions
civiles eL administratives," pp. 225-233.--Annuaire de l'Institut for
1813]

[Footnote 6242: Law of Oct. 25, 1795, and act of Jan. 23, 1803.]

[Footnote 6243: Roederer, III., 548.--Id., III., 332 (Aug. 2, 1801).]

[Footnote 6244: Welschinger, "La Censure sous le premier Empire," p.440.
(Speech by Napoleon to the Council of State, Dec.20, 1812.)--Merlet,
"Tableau de la littérature française de 1800 à 1815," I., 128. M.
Royer-Collard had just given his first lecture at the Sorbonne to an
audience of three hundred persons against the philosophy of Locke
and Condillac (1811). Napoleon, having read the lecture, says on the
following day to Talleyrand: "Do you know, Monsieur le Grand-Electeur,
that a new and very important philosophy is appearing in my
University... which may well rid us entirely of the ideologists by
killing them on the spot with reason?"--Royer-Collard, on being informed
of this eulogium, remarked to some of his friends: "The Emperor is
mistaken. Descartes is more disobedient to despotism than Locke."]

[Footnote 6245: Mignet, "Notices et Portraits." (Eulogy of M. de
Tracy.)]

[Footnote 6246: J.-B. Say, "Traité d'économie-politique," 2d ed., 1814
(Notice). "The press was no longer free. Every exact presentation of
things received the censure of a government founded on a lie."]

[Footnote 6247: Welschinger, p. 160 (Jan. 24, 1810).--Villemain,
"Souvenirs contemporains," vol. I., p. 180. After 1812, "it is literally
exact to state that every emission of written ideas, every historical
mention, even the most remote and most foreign, became a daring and
suspicious matter."--(Journal of Sir John Malcolm, Aug. 4, 1815, visit
to Langlès, the orientalist, editor of Chardin, to which he has added
notes, one of which is on the mission to Persia of Sir John Malcolm) "He
at first said to me that he had followed another author: afterwards he
excused himself by alleging the system of Bonaparte, whose censors, he
said, not only cut out certain passages, but added others which they
believed helped along his plans."]

[Footnote 6248: Reading this Lenin and others like him undoubtedly would
agree with Napoleon and therefore liberally fund plans to place agents
and controllers in all the Universities in the World hence ensuring
politically correct attitudes. (SR.)]

[Footnote 6249: Merlet, ibid. (According to the papers of M. de
Fontanes, II. 258.)]

[Footnote 6250: Id., Ibid. "Care must be taken to avoid all reaction
in speaking of the Revolution. No man could oppose it. Blame belongs
neither to those who have perished nor to those who survived it. It was
not in any individual might to change the elements and foresee events
born out of the nature of things."]

[Footnote 6251: Villemain, Ibid., I., 145. (Words of M. de Narbonne
on leaving Napoleon after several interviews with him in 1812.) "The
Emperor, so powerful, 50 victorious is disturbed by only one thing in
this world and that is by people who talk, and, in default of these, by
those who think. And yet he seems to like them or, at least, cannot do
without them."]

[Footnote 6252: Welschinger, ibid., p.30. (Session of the Council of
State, Dec.12, 1809)]

[Footnote 6253: Welschinger, ibid., pp.31, 33, 175, 190. (Decree of
Feb.5, 1810.)--"Revue Critique," Sep. 1870. (Weekly bulletin of the
general direction of publicauons for the last three months of 1810 and
the first three months of 1814, published by Charles Thursot.)]

[Footnote 6254: Collection of laws and decrees, vol. XII., p.170. "When
the censors shall have examined a work and allowed the publication
of it, the publishers shall be authorized to have it printed. But
the minister of the police shall still have the right to suppress it
entirely if he thinks proper."--Welschinger, ibid., pp. 346-374.]

[Footnote 6255: Welschinger, ibid., pp. 173, 175.]

[Footnote 6256: Id., ibid., pp. 223, 231, 233. (The copy of "Athalie"
with the erasures of the police still exists in the prompter's library
of the Théâtre Français.)--Id., ibid., p 244. (Letter of the
secretary-general of the police to the weekly managers of the Théâtre
Français, Feb. 1, 1809, In relation to the "Mort d'Hector," by Luce de
Lancival.) "Messieurs, His Excellency, the minister-senator, has
expressly charged me to request the suppression of the following lines
on the stage--'Hector': Déposez un moment ce fer toujours vainqueur,
Cher Hector, et craignez de laisser le bonheur."]

[Footnote 6257: Welschinger, ibid., p. 13. (Act of Jan. 17, 1800.)--117,
118. (Acts of Feb. 18, 1811, and Sep. 17, 1813.)--119, 129. (No
indemnity for legitimate owners. The decree of confiscation states in
principle that the ownership of journals can become property only
by virtue of an express concession made by the sovereign, that this
concession was not made to the actual founders and proprietors and that
their claim is null.)]

[Footnote 6258: Id.. ibid., pp.196, 201.]

[Footnote 6259: "Revue critique," ibid., pp.142, 146, 149.]

[Footnote 6260: Welschinger, ibid., p. 251.]

[Footnote 6261: "Corréspondance de Napoléon Iere." (Letter of the
Emperor to Cambacérès, Nov.21, 1806.)--Letters to Fouché, Oct.25 and
Dec. 31, 1806.)--Welschinger, ibid., pp.236, 244.]

[Footnote 6262: "Moniteur," Jan. I, 1806. (Tribunate, session of Nivôse
9, year XIV., speeches of MM. Albisson and Gillet.--Senate, speeches
of MM. Pérignon, Garat, de Lacépède.)--In the following numbers we find
municipal addresses, letters of bishops and the odes of poets in the
same strain.--In the way of official enthusiasm take the following two
fine examples. ("Debats," March 29, 1811.) "The Paris municipal council
deliberated on the vote of a pension for life of 10,000 francs in favor
of M. de Govers, His Majesty's second page, for bringing to the Hôtel
de Ville the joyful news of the birth of the King of Rome.. .. Everybody
was charmed with his grace and presence of mind."--Faber, "Notices sur
l'intérieur de France," p.25. "I know of a tolerably large town which
could not light its lamps in 1804, on account of having sent its mayor
to Paris at the expense of the commune to see Bonaparte crowned."]

[Footnote 6263: Taine here explains the method which was to be copied by
all the totalitarian leaders of the 20th century, especially by the ever
present communist-socialist-revolutionary organizations and their more
or less hidden leaders. (SR.)]

[Footnote 6264: Lenin, Stalin and their successors must all have found
this idea interesting and did also proceed to put much of the media in
the world under their control. (SR.)]

[Footnote 6265: Faber, ibid., p. 32 (1807). "I saw one day a physician,
an honest man, unexpectedly denounced for having stated in a social
gathering in the town some observations on the medical system under
the existing government. The denunciator, a French employee, was the
physician's friend and denounced him because he was afraid of being
denounced himself."--Count Chaptal, "Notes." Enumeration of the police
forces which control and complete each other. "Besides the minister and
the prefect of police Napoleon had three directors-general residing
at Paris and also in superintendence of the departments;.. besides,
commissioners-general of police in all the large towns and special
commissioners in all others; moreover, the gendarmerie, which daily
transmitted a bulletin of the situation all over France to the
inspector-general; again, reports of his aids and generals, of his guard
on supplementary police, the most dangerous of all to persons about
the court and to the principal agents of the administration; finally,
several special police-bodies to render to him an account of what passed
among savants, tradesmen and soldiers. All this correspondence reached
him at Moscow as at the Tuileries."]

[Footnote 6266: Faber, ibid. (1807), p.35. "Lying, systematically
organized, forming the basis of government and consecrated in public
acts,... the abjuring of all truth, of all personal conviction, is the
characteristic of the administrators as presenting to view the acts,
sentiments and ideas of the government, which makes use of them for
scenic effect in the pieces it gives on the theatre of the world...
. The administrators do not believe a word they say, nor those
administered."]

[Footnote 6267: The following two confidential police reports show,
among many others, the sentiments of the public and the usefulness of
repressive measures. (Archives nationales, F.7, 3016, Report of the
commissioner-general of Marseilles for the second quarter of 1808.)
"Events in Spain have largely fixed, and essentially fixed, attention.
In vain would the attentive observer like to conceal the truth on this
point; the fact is that the Spanish revolution is unfavorably looked
upon. It was at first thought that the legitimate heir would succeed to
Charles IV. The way in which people have been undeceived has given the
public a direction quite opposite to the devoted ideas of His Majesty
the Emperor... No generous soul... rises to the level of the great
continental cause."--Ibid. (Report for the second quarter of 1809.) "I
have posted observers in the public grounds.... As a result of these
measures, of this constant vigilance, of the care I have taken to summon
before me the heads of public establishments when I have ascertained
that the slightest word has been spoken, I attain the end proposed. But
I am assured that if the fear of the upper police did not restrain
the disturbers, the brawlers, they would publicly express an opinion
contrary to the principles of the government.... Public opinion is daily
going down. There is great misery and consternation. Murmurs are not
openly heard, but discontent exists among citizens generally.... The
continental war. the naval warfare, events in Rome, Spain and Germany,
the absolute cessation of trade, the conscription, the droits unis...
are all so many motives of corruption of the public mind. Priests and
devotees, merchants and proprietors, artisans, workmen, the people in
fine, everybody is discontented.... In general, they are insensible
to the continental victories. All classes of citizens are much more
sensitive to the levies of the conscription than to the successes which
come from them."]

[Footnote 6268: There is here, 100 years later, a message for us about
the enormous force which, under the name of politically correct, is
haunting our media, our universities and our political life. (SR.)]




CHAPTER III. EVOLUTION BETWEEN 1814 AND 1890.




I. Evolution of the Napoleonic machine.

     History of the Napoleonic machine.--The first of its two
     arms, operating on adults, is dislocated and breaks.--The
     second, which operates on youth, works intact until 1850.
     --Why it remains intact.--Motives of governors.--Motives of
     the governed.

After him, the springs of his machine relax; and so do, naturally, the
two groups controlled by the machine. The first, that of adult men,
frees itself the most and the soonest: during the following half
century, we see the preventive or repressive censorship of books,
journals and theatres, every special instrument that gags free speech,
relaxing its hold, breaking down bit by bit and at last tumbling to the
ground. Even when again set up and persistently and brutally applied,
old legal muzzles are never to become as serviceable as before. No
government will undertake, like that of Napoleon, to stop at once all
outlets of written thought; some will always remain more or less open.
Even during the rigorous years of the Restoration and of the second
Empire the stifling process is to diminish; mouths open and there is
some way of public expression, at least in books and likewise through
the press, provided one speaks discreetly and moderately in cool and
general terms and in a low, even tone of voice. Here, the imperial
machine, too aggressive, soon broke down; immediately, the iron arm by
which it held adults seemed insupportable to them and they were able
more and more to bend, push it away or break it. Today, in 1890, nothing
remains of it but its fragments; for twenty years it has ceased to work
and its parts, even, are utterly useless.

But, to the contrary, in the other direction, in the second group, on
children, on boys, on young men, the second arm, intact down to 1850,
then shortened but soon strengthened, more energetic and more effective
than ever, maintained its hold almost entirely.

Undoubtedly, after 1814, its mechanism is less rigid, its application
less strict, its employment less universal, its operation less severe;
it gives less offence and does not hurt as much. For example, after
the first Restoration,[6301] the decree of 1811 against the smaller
seminaries is repealed. They are handed back to the bishops, resume
their ecclesiastical character and return to the special and normal
road out of which Napoleon forced them to march. The drum, the drill and
other exercises too evidently Napoleonic disappear almost immediately in
the private and public establishments devoted to common instruction. The
school system ceases to be a military apprenticeship and the college is
no longer a preparatory annex for the barracks. Soon and for many years,
Guizot, Cousin, and Villemain brilliantly hold the chairs at Sorbonne
university and teach the highest subjects of philosophy, literature and
history admired by attentive and sympathetic audiences. Later, under the
monarchy of July, the Institute, mutilated by the First Consul, restores
and completes itself. It becomes once more united with the suspect
division of the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences, which after
the Consulate, had been missing. In 1833, a minister, Guizot, provides,
through a law which has become an institution, for the regular
maintenance, the obligatory appropriation, the certain recruitment, and
for the quality and universality of primary instruction. At the same
time, during eighteen years, the university administration, moderating
its pressure or smoothing its sharp points, operates at the three
stages of instruction in tolerant or liberal hands, with all the caution
compatible with its organization. It does so in such a way as to do a
great deal of good without much harm, by half-satisfying the majority
which, in its entirety, is semi-believer, semi-freethinker, by not
seriously offending anybody except the Catholic clergy and that
unyielding minority which, through doctrinal principle or through
religious zeal, assigns to education as a directing end and supreme
object, the definitive cultivation, rooting and flowering of faith. But,
in law as well as in fact, the University of 1808 still subsists; it has
kept its rights, it levies its taxes, it exercises its jurisdiction and
enjoys its monopoly.

In the early days of the Restoration, in 1814, the government maintained
it only provisionally. It promised everything, radical reform and
full liberty. It announced that, through its efforts, "the forms
and direction of the education of children should be restored to the
authority of fathers and mothers, tutors and families."[6302] Simply
a prospectus and an advertisement by the new pedagogue who installs
himself and thus, by soothing words, tries to conciliate parents. After
a partial sketch and an ordinance quickly repealed,[6303] the rulers
discover that the University of Napoleon is a very good reigning tool,
much better than that of which they had the management previous to 1789,
much easier handled and more serviceable. It is the same with all social
tools sketched out and half-fashioned by the Revolution and completed
and set a-going by the Consulate and the Empire; each is constructed
"by reason," "according to principles," and therefore its mechanism is
simple; its pieces all fit into each other with precision; they transmit
throughout exactly the impulsion received and thus operate at one
stroke, with uniformity, instantaneously, with certitude, oil all parts
of the territory; the lever which starts the machine is central and,
throughout its various services, the new rulers hold this lever in hand.
Apropos of local administration, the Duc d'Angoulême said in 1815,[6304]
"We prefer the departments to the provinces." In like manner, the
government of the restored monarchy prefers the imperial University,
sole, unique, coherent, disciplined and centralized, to the old
provincial universities, the old scattered, scholastic institution,
diverse, superintended rather than governed, to every school
establishment more or less independent and spontaneous.

In the first place, it gains thereby a vast staff of salaried
dependents, the entire teaching staff,[6305] on which it has a hold
through its favors or the reverse through ambition and the desire for
promotion, through fear of dismissal and concern for daily bread. At
first, 22,000 primary teachers, thousands of professors, directors,
censors, principals, regents and subordinates in the 36 lycées, 368
colleges and 1255 institutions and boarding-schools. After this, many
hundreds of notable individuals, all the leading personages of each
university circumscription, the administrators of 28 academies, the
professors of the 23 literary faculties, of the 10 faculties of the
sciences, of the 9 faculties of law, and of the 3 faculties of
medicine. Add to these, the savants of the Collège de France and École
Polytechnique, every establishment devoted to high, speculative
or practical instruction: these are highest in repute and the most
influential; here the heads of science and of literature are found.
Through them and their seconds or followers of every degree, in the
faculties, lycées, colleges, minor seminaries, institutions, boarding
schools, and small schools, beliefs or opinions can be imposed on, or
suggested to, 2000 law students, 4000 medical students, 81,000 thousand
pupils in secondary education and 700,000 scholars in the primary
department. Let us retain and make use of this admirable tool, but let
us apply it to our own purposes and utilize it for our service.[6306]
Thus far, under the Republic and the Empire, its designers, more or less
Jacobin, have moved it as they thought best, and therefore moved it to
the "left". Let us now move, as it suits us, to the "right."[6307]
All that is necessary is to turn it in another direction and for good;
henceforth," the basis of education[6308] shall be religion, monarchy,
legitimacy and the charter."

To this end, we, the dominant party, use our legal rights. In the place
of bad wheels we put good ones. We purify our staff. We do not appoint
or leave in place any but safe men. At the end of six years, nearly
all the rectors, proviseurs and professors of philosophy, many other
professors and a number of the censors,[6309] are all priests. At the
Sorbonne, M. Cousin has been silenced and M. Guizot replaced by M.
Durosoir. At the Collège de France we have dismissed Tissot and we do
not accept M. Magendie. We "suppress" in block the Faculty of Medicine
in order that, on reorganizing it, our hands may be free and eleven
professors with bad notes be got rid of, among others Pinel, Dubois, de
Jussieu, Desgenettes, Pelletan and Vauquelin. We suppress another center
of insalubrities, the upper École Normale, and, for the recruitment of
our educational body, we institute[6310] at the principal seat of each
academy a sort of university novitiate where the pupils, few in number,
expressly selected, prepared from their infancy, will imbibe deeper
and more firmly retain the sound doctrines suitable to their future
condition.

We let the small seminaries multiply and fill up until they comprise
50,000 pupils. It is the bishop who founds them; no educator or
inspector of education is so worthy of confidence. Therefore, we confer
upon him "in all that concerns religion,"[6311] the duty "of visiting
them himself, or delegating his vicars-general to visit them," the
faculty "of suggesting to the royal council of public instruction the
measures which he deems necessary." At the top of the hierarchy sits
a Grand-Master with the powers and title of M. de Fontanes and with
an additional title, member of the cabinet and minister of public
instruction, M. de Freyssinous, bishop of Hermopolis,[6312] and, in
difficult cases, this bishop, placed between his Catholic conscience and
the positive articles of the legal statute, "sacrifices the law" to his
conscience.[6313]--This is the advantage which can be taken from the
tool of public education. After 1850, it is to be used in the same way
and in the same sense; after 1796, and later after 1875, it was made to
work as vigorously in the opposite direction. Whatever the rulers may
be, whether monarchists, imperialists or republicans, they are the
masters who use it for their own advantage; for this reason, even when
resolved not to abuse the instrument, they keep it intact; they reserve
the use of it for themselves,[6314] and pretty hard blows are necessary
to sever or relax the firm hold which they have on the central lever.

Except for these excesses and especially after they finish, when the
government, from 1828 to 1848, ceases to be sectarian, and the
normal play of the institution is no longer corrupted by political
interference, the governed accept the University in block, just as their
rulers maintain it: they also have motives of their own, the same as for
submitting to other tools of Napoleonic centralization.--And first
of all, as a departmental and communal institution, the university
institution operates wholly alone; it exacts little or no collaboration
on the part of those interested; it relieves them of any effort, dispute
or care, which is pleasant. Like the local administration, which,
without their help or with scarcely any, provides them with bridges,
roads, canals, cleanliness, salubrity and precautions against contagious
diseases, the scholastic administration, without making any demand on
their indolence, puts its full service, the local and central apparatus
of primary, secondary, superior and special instruction, its staff and
material, furniture and buildings, masters and schedules, examinations
and grades, rules and discipline, expenditure and receipts, all at its
disposition. As at the door of a table d'hôte, they are told,

"Come in and take a seat. We offer you the dishes you like best and in
the most convenient order. Don't trouble yourself about the waiters
or the kitchen; a grand central society, an intelligent and beneficent
agency, presiding at Paris takes charge of this and relieves you of it.
Pass your plate, and eat; that is all you need care about. Besides, the
charge is very small."[6315]

In effect, here as elsewhere, Napoleon has introduced his rigid
economical habits, exact accounts and timely or disguised
tax-levies.[6316] A few additional centimes among a good many others
inserted by his own order in the local budget, a few imperceptible
millions among several hundreds of other millions in the enormous sum of
the central budget, constitute the resources which defray the expenses
of public education. Not only does the quota of each taxpayer for this
purpose remain insignificant, but it disappears in the sum total of
which it is only an item that he does not notice.--The parents, for the
instruction of a child, do not pay out of their pockets directly, with
the consciousness of a distinct service rendered them and which they
indemnify,[6317] but 12, 10, 3, or even 2 francs a year; again,
through the increasing extension of gratis instruction, a fifth, then a
third,[6318] and later one half of them are exempt from this charge.

For secondary instruction, at the college or the lycée, they take out
of their purses annually only 40 or 50 francs; and, if their son is a
boarder, these few francs mingle in with others forming the total sum
paid for him during the year, about 700 francs,[6319] which is a small
sum for defraying the expenses, not only of instruction, but, again, for
the support of the lad in lodging, food, washing, light, fire and the
rest. The parents, at this rate, feel that they are not making a bad
bargain; they are not undergoing extortion, the State not acting like a
rapacious contractor. And better yet, it is often a paternal creditor,
distributing, as it does, three or four thousand scholarships. If their
son obtains one of these, their annual debt is remitted to them and the
entire university provision of instruction and support is given to
them gratis. In the Faculties, the payment of fees for entrance,
examinations, grades and diplomas is not surprising, for the
certificates or parchments they receive in exchange for their money are,
for the young man, so many positive acquisitions which smooth the way to
a career and serve as valuable stock which confers upon him social rank.
Besides, the entrance to these Faculties is free and gratuitous, as well
as in all other establishments for superior instruction. Whoever chooses
and when he chooses may attend without paying a cent.

Thus constituted, the University seems to the public as a liberal,
democratic, humanitarian institution and yet economical, expending
very little. Its administrators and professors, even the best of them,
receive only a small salary--6000 francs at the Muséum and the Collége
de France,[6320] 7500 at the Sorbonne, 5000 in the provincial Faculties,
4000 or 3000 in the lycées, 2000, 1500 and 1200 in the communal
colleges--just enough to live on. The highest functionaries live in a
very modest way; each keeps body and soul together on a small salary
which he earns by moderate work, without notable increase or decrease,
in the expectation of gradual promotion or of a sure pension at the end.
There is no waste, the accounts being well kept; there are no sinecures,
even in the libraries; no unfair treatment or notorious scandals. Envy,
notions of equality scarcely exist; there are enough situations for
petty ambitions and average merit, while there is scarcely any place
for great ambitions or great merit. Eminent men serve the State and
the public cheaply for a living salary, a higher rank in the Legion of
Honor, sometimes for a seat in the Institute, or for European fame
in connection with a university, with no other recompense than the
satisfaction of working according to conscience[6321] and of winning the
esteem of twenty or thirty competent judges who, in France or abroad,
are capable of appreciating their labor at its just value.[6322]

The last reason for accepting or tolerating the University; its work
at home, or in its surroundings, develops gradually and more or less
broadly according to necessities.--In 1815, there were 22,000 primary
schools of every kind; in 1829,[6323] 30,000; and in 1850, 63,000. In
1815, 737,000 children were taught in them; in 1829, 1,357,000; and
in 1850, 3,787,000. In 1815, there was only one normal school for the
education of primary teachers; in 1850, there are 78. Consequently,
whilst in 1827, 42 out of 100 conscripts could read, there were in 1877,
85; whilst in 1820, 34 out of 100 women could write their names on the
marriage contract, in 1879 there are 70.--Similarly, in the lycées and
colleges, the University which, in 1815, turned out 37,000 youths, turns
out 54,000 in 1848, and 64,000 in 1865;[6324] many branches of study,
especially history,[6325] are introduced into secondary instruction
and bear good fruit.--Even in superior instruction which, through
organization, remains languid, for parade, or in a rut, there are
ameliorations; the State adds chairs to its Paris establishments and
founds new Faculties in the provinces. In sum, an inquisitive mind
capable of self-direction can, at least in Paris, acquire full
information and obtain a comprehensive education on all subjects by
turning the diverse university institutions to account.--If there
are very serious objections to the system, for example, regarding the
boarding part of it (internat), the fathers who had been subject to it
accept it for their sons. If there were very great defects in it, for
example, the lack of veritable universities, the public which had not
been abroad and ignores history did not perceive them. In vain does M.
Cousin, in relation to public instruction in Germany, in his eloquent
report of 1834, as formerly Cuvier in his discreet report of 1811, point
out this defect; in vain does M. Guizot, the minister, propose to remove
it:

"I did not find," says he,[6326] "any strong public opinion which
induced me to carry out any general and urgent measure in higher
instruction. In the matter of superior instruction the public, at
this time,... was not interested in any great idea, or prompted by
any impatient want.... Higher education as it was organized and given,
sufficed for the practical needs of society, which regarded it with a
mixture of satisfaction and indifference."

In the matter of education, not only at this third stage but again for
the first two stages, public opinion so far as aims, results, methods
and limitations is concerned, was apathetic. That wonderful science
which, in the eighteenth century, with Jean-Jacques, Condillac,
Valentin, Hally, Abbé de l'Epée and so many others, sent forth such
powerful and fruitful jets, had dried up and died out; transplanted to
Switzerland and Germany, pedagogy yet lives but it is dead on its native
soil.[6327] There is no longer in France any persistent research nor are
there any fecund theories on the aims, means, methods, degrees and forms
of mental and moral culture, no doctrine in process of formation and
application, no controversies, no dictionaries and special manuals, not
one well-informed and important Review, and no public lectures. Now
an experimental science is simply the summing-up of many diverse
experiences, freely attempted, freely discussed and verified. Through
the forced results of the university monopoly there are no actual
universities: among other results of the Napoleonic institution, one
could after 1808 note, the decadence of pedagogy and foresee its early
demise. Neither parents, nor masters nor the young cared anything about
it; outside of the system in which they live they imagine nothing; they
are accustomed to it the same as to the house in which they dwell. They
may grumble sometimes at the arrangement of the rooms, the low stories
and narrow staircases, against bad lighting, ventilation and want of
cleanliness, against the exactions of the proprietor and concierge; but,
as for transforming the building, arranging it otherwise, reconstructing
it in whole or in part, they never think of it. For, in the first place,
they have no plan; and next, the house is too large and its parts too
well united; through its mass and size it maintains itself and would
still remain indefinitely if, all at once, in 1848, an unforeseen
earthquake had not made breaches in its walls.




II. Educational monopoly of Church and State.

     Law of 1850 and freedom of instruction.--Its apparent object
     and real effects.--Alliance of Church and State.--The real
     monopoly.--Ecclesiastical control of the University until
     1859.--Gradual rupture of the Alliance.--The University
     again becomes secular.--Lay and clerical interests.
     --Separation and satisfaction of both interests down to 1876.
     --Peculiarity of this system.--State motives for taking the
     upper hand.--Parents, in fact, have no choice between two
     monopolies.--Original and forced decline of private
     institutions.--Their ruin complete after 1850 owing to the
     too-powerful and double competition of Church and State.
     --The Church and the State sole surviving educators.
     --Interested and doctrinal direction of the two educational
     systems.--Increasing divergence in both directions.--Their
     effect on youth.

The day after the 24th of February 1848,[6328] M. Cousin, meeting M.
de Remusat on the quay Voltaire, raised his arms towards heaven and
exclaimed:

"Let us hurry and fall on our knees in front of the bishops--they alone
can save us now!"

While M. Thiers, with equal vivacity, in the parliamentary committee
exclaimed: "Cousin, Cousin, do you comprehend the lesson we have
received? Abbé Dupanloup is right."[6329] Hence the new law.[6330] M.
Beugnot, who presented it, clearly explains its aims and object: the
Government "must assemble the moral forces of the country and unite
them with each other to combat with and overthrow the common enemy," the
anti-social party, "which, victorious, would have no mercy on anybody,"
neither on the University nor on the Church. Consequently, the
University abandons its monopoly: the State is no longer the sole
purveyor of public instruction; private schools and associations may
teach as they please. The government will no longer inspect their
"education," but only "morality, hygiene, and salubrity;"[6331]--they
are out of its jurisdiction and exempt from its taxes. Therefore, the
government establishments and free establishments will no longer be
dangerous adversaries, but "useful co-operators;" they will owe and give
to each other "good advice and good examples;" it will maintain for
both "an equal interest;" henceforth, its University "will be merely an
institution supported by it to quicken competition and make this bear
good fruit," and, to this end, it comes to an understanding with its
principal competitor, the Church.

But in this coalition of the two powers it is the Church which has the
best of it, takes the upper hand and points out the way. For, not only
does she profit by the liberty decreed, and profit by it almost alone,
founding in twenty years afterwards nearly one hundred ecclesiastical
colleges and putting the Ignorantin brethren everywhere in the primary
schools; but, again, by virtue of the law,[6332] she places four bishops
or archbishops in the superior council of the University; by virtue of
the law, she puts into each departmental academic council the bishop of
the diocese and a priest selected by him; moreover, through her credit
with the central government she enjoys all the administrative favors.
In short, from above and close at hand, she leads, keeps in check,
and governs the lay University and, from 1849 to 1859, the priestly
domination and interference, the bickering, the repressions, the
dismissals,[6333] the cases of disgrace, are a revival of the system
which, from 1821 to 1828, had already been severe. As under the
Restoration, the Church had joined hands with the State to administrate
the school-machine in concert with it; but, under the Restoration, she
reserves to herself the upper hand, and it is she who works the machine
rather than the State. In sum, under the name, the show, and the
theoretical proclamation of liberty for all, the University monopoly
is reorganized, if not by law, at least in fact, and in favor of the
Church.

Towards 1859, and after the war in Italy, regarding the Pope and
the temporal power, the hands which were joined now let go and then
separate; there is a dissolution of partnership; their interests cease
to agree. Two words are coined, both predestined to great fortune, on
the one side the "secular" interest and on the other side the "clerical"
interest; henceforth, the government no longer subordinates the former
to the latter and, under the ministry of M. Duruy, the direction of the
University becomes frankly secular. Consequently, the entire educational
system, in gross and in its principal features, is to resemble, until
1876, that of the of July.[6334] For sixteen years, the two great
teaching powers, the spiritual and the temporal, unable to do better,
are to support each other but act apart, each on its own ground and each
in its own way; only the Church no longer acts through the toleration
and gracious permission of the University, but through the legal
abolition of the monopoly and by virtue of a written law. The whole
composes a passable régime, less oppressive than those that preceded it;
in any event, the two millions of devout Catholics who consider unbelief
as a terrible evil, the fathers and mothers who subordinate instruction
to education,[6335] and desire above all things to preserve the faith
of their children up to adult age, now find in the ecclesiastical
establishments well-run hothouses and protected against draughts of
modernity. One urgent need of the first order,[6336] legitimate, deeply
felt by many men and especially by women, has received satisfaction;
parents who do not experience this want, place their children in the
lycées; in 1865, in the smaller seminaries and other ecclesiastical
schools there are 54,000 pupils and in the State colleges and lycées
64,000,[6337] which two bodies balance each other.

But even that is a danger. For, naturally, the teaching State finds with
regret that its clients diminish; it does not view the rival favorably
which takes away so many of its pupils. Naturally also, in case of an
electoral struggle, the Church favors the party which favors it, the
effect of which is to expose it to ill-will and, in case of political
defeat, to hostilities. Now, the chances are, that, should hostile
rulers, in this case, attempt to strike it in its most vulnerable point,
that of teaching, they might set aside liberty, and even toleration, and
adopt the school machine of Napoleon in order to restore it as best they
could, enlarge it, derive from it for their own profit and against the
Church, whatever could be got out of it, to use with all their power
according to the principles and intentions of the Convention and the
Directory. Thus, the compromise accepted by Church and State is simply
a provisional truce; to-morrow, this truce will be broken; the fatal
French prejudice which erects the State into a national educator is ever
present; after a partial and brief slackening of its energy, it will try
to recover its ascendancy and recommence its ravages.--And, on the other
hand, even under this régime, more liberal than its predecessor, real
liberty is much restricted; instead of one monopoly, there are two.
Between two kinds of establishments, one secular, resembling a barracks,
and the other ecclesiastical, resembling a seminary or convent, parents
may choose and that is all. Ordinarily, if they prefer one, it is not
because they consider it good, but because, in their opinion, the other
is worse, while there is no third one at hand, built after a different
type, with its own independent and special character, adapting itself to
their tastes and accommodating itself to their necessities.

In the early years of the century there were thousands of secondary
schools of every kind and degree, everywhere born or reborn,
spontaneous, local, raised up through the mutual understanding of
parents and masters, and, consequently, subject to this understanding,
diverse, flexible, dependent on the law of supply and demand,
competitive, each careful to keep its own patrons, each compelled, like
every other private enterprise, to adjust its working to the views and
faculties of its clients. It is very probable that, if these had been
allowed to exist, if the new legislator had not been radically hostile
to permanent corporations, endowments, and mortmain titles; if, through
the jealous intervention of his Council of State and the enormous
levies of his fiscal system, the government had not discouraged free
associations and the free donations to which they might have been
entitled, the best of these secondary schools would have survived: those
which might have been able to adapt themselves to their surroundings
would have had the most vitality; according to a well-known law, they
would have prospered in branching off, each in its own sense and in its
own way.--Now, at this date, after the demolitions of the Revolution,
all pedagogic roads were open and, at each of their starting-points,
the runners were ready, not merely the secular but, again, independent
ecclesiastics, liberal Gallicans, surviving Jansenists, constitutional
priests, enlightened monks, some of them philosophers and half-secular
in mind or even at heart, using Port-Royal manuals, Rollin's "Traité des
Études" and Condillac's "Cours d'Etudes," the best-tried and most fecund
methods of instruction, all the traditions of the seventeenth century
from Arnauld to Lancelot and all the novelties of the eighteenth century
from Locke to Jean-Jacques Rousseau, all wide-awake or aroused by the
demands of the public and by this unique opportunity and eager to do
and to do well. In the provinces[6338] as at Paris, people were seeking,
trying and groping. There was room and encouragement for original,
sporadic and multiple invention, for schools proportionate with and
suited to various and changing necessities, Latin, mathematical or
mixed schools, some for theoretical science and others for practical
apprenticeship, these commercial and those industrial, from the lowest
standpoint of technical and rapid preparation up to the loftiest summits
of speculative and prolonged study.

On this school world in the way of formation, Napoleon has riveted his
uniformity, the rigorous apparatus of his university, his unique
system, narrow, inflexible, applied from above. We have seen with what
restrictions, with what insistence, with what convergence of means, what
prohibitions, what taxes, what application of the university monopoly,
and with what systematic hostility to private establishments!--In the
towns, and by force, they become branches of the lycée and imitate its
classes; in this way Sainte-Barbe is allowed to subsist at Paris and,
until the abolition of the monopoly, the principal establishments of
Paris, Massin, Jauffrey, Bellaguet, existed only on this condition,
that of becoming auxiliaries, subordinates and innkeepers for lycée
day-scholars; such is still the case to-day for the lycées Bossuet
and Gerson. In the way of education and instruction the little that an
institution thus reduced can preserve of originality and of pedagogic
virtue is of no account.--In the country, the Oratoriens who have
repurchased Juilly are obliged,[6339] in order to establish a free and
durable school of "Christian and national education," to turn aside
the civil law which interdicts trusts and organize themselves into a
"Tontine Society" and thus present their disinterested enterprise in the
light of an industrial and commercial speculation, that of a lucrative
and well-attended boarding school. Still at the present day similar
fictions have to be resorted to for the establishment and duration of
like enterprises.[6340]

Naturally, under this prohibitive régime, private establishments are
born with difficulty; and afterwards, absorbed, mutilated and strangled,
they find no less difficulty in keeping alive and thus degenerate,
decline and succumb one by one. And yet, in 1815, not counting the 41
small seminaries with their 5000 scholars, there still remained 1,225
private schools, with 39,000 scholars, confronting the 36 lycées and 368
communal colleges which, together, had only 37,000 scholars. Of these
1,255 private schools there are only 825 in 1854, 622 in 1865, 494 in
1876, and, finally, in 1887, 302 with 20,174 scholars; on the other
hand, the State establishments have 89,000 schools, and those of the
Church amount to 73,000. It is only after 1850 that the decadence of
secular and private institutions is precipitated; in effect, instead
of one competitor, they have two, the second as formidable as the first
one, both enjoying unlimited credit, possessors of immense capital and
determined to spend money without calculation, the State, on one side
abstracting millions from the pockets of the taxpayers and, on the other
side, the Church deriving its millions from the purses of the faithful:
the struggle between isolated individuals and these two great
organized powers who give instruction at a discount or gratis is too
unequal.[6341]

Such is the actual and final effect of the first Napoleonic monopoly:
the enterprise of the State has, by a counter-stroke, incited the
enterprise of the clergy; both now complete the ruin of the others,
private, different in kind and independent, which, supported wholly by
family approbation, have no other object in view than to render families
content. On the contrary, along with this purpose, the two survivors
have another object, each its own, a superior and doctrinal object, due
to its own particular interest and antagonism to the opposite interest;
it is in view of this object, in view of a political or religious
purpose, that each in its own domicile directs education and instruction
like Napoleon, each inculcates on, or insinuates into, young minds its
social and moral opinions which are clear-cut and become cutting. Now,
the majority of parents, who prefer peace to war, desire that their
children should entertain moderate and not bellicose opinions. They
would like to see them respectful and intelligent, and nothing more.
But neither of the two rival institutions thus limits itself; each works
beyond and aside,[6342] and when the father, at the end of July,[6343]
goes for his son at the ecclesiastical college or secular institution,
he risks finding in the young man of seventeen the militant prejudices,
the hasty and violent conclusions and the uncompromising rigidity of
either a "laïcisant" or a "clérical."




III. Internal Vices

     The internal vices of the system.--Barrack or convent
     discipline of the boarding-school.--Number and proportions
     of scholars in State and Church establishments.--Starting
     point of the French boarding-school.--The school community
     viewed not as a distinct organ of the State but as a
     mechanism wielded by the State.--Effects of these two
     conceptions.--Why the boarding-school entered into and
     strengthened ecclesiastical establishments.--Effects of the
     boarding-school on the young man.--Gaps in his experience,
     errors of judgment, no education of his will.--The evil
     aggravated by the French system of special and higher
     schools.

Meanwhile, the innate vices of the primitive system have lasted and,
and, among others, the worst of all, the internat[6344] under the
discipline of barracks or convent, while the university, through
its priority and supremacy, in contact with or contiguously, has
communicated this discipline at first to its subordinates, and afterward
to its rivals.--In 1887,[6345] in the State lycées and colleges,
there are more than 39,000 boarding-schools (internes) while, in the
ecclesiastic establishments, it is worse: out of 50,000 pupils there,
over 27,000 are internes, to which must be added the 23,000 pupils of
the small seminaries, properly so called, nearly all of them boarders;
in a total of 163,000 pupils we find 89,000 internes.[6346] Thus, to
secure secondary instruction, more than one-half of the youth of France
undergo the internat, ecclesiastic or secular. This is peculiar to
France, and is due to the way in which Napoleon, in 1806, seized on and
perverted all school enterprises.[6347]

Before 1789, in France, this enterprise, although largely trammeled and
impeded by the State and the Church, was not violated in principle nor
perverted in essence; still at the present day, in Germany, in England,
in the United States, it exists and is developed in accordance with its
nature. It is admitted to be a private enterprise,[6348] the collective
and spontaneous work of several associates voluntarily bound together,
old founders, actual and future benefactors, masters and parents and
even scholars,[6349] each in his place and function, under a statute
and according to tradition, in such a way as to continue functioning
indefinitely, in order to provide, like a gas company on its own
responsibility, at its own risk and expense, a provider of services for
those who want it; in other terms, the school enterprise must, like any
other undertaking, render acceptable what it offers thereby satisfying
the needs of its clients.--Naturally, it adapts itself to these needs;
its directors and those concerned do what is necessary. With hands free,
and grouped around an important interest evidently for a common purpose,
mutually bound and veritable associates not only legally but in feeling,
devoted to a local enterprise and local residents for many years, often
even for life, they strive not to offend the profound repugnance of the
young and of families. They therefore make the necessary arrangements
internally and with the parents.[6350]

That is why, outside of France, the French internat, so artificial,
so forced, so exaggerated, is almost unknown. In Germany, out of one
hundred pupils in the gymnases, which correspond to our lycées, there
are scarcely ten boarders lodged and fed in the gymnase; the rest, even
when their parents do not live near by, remain day-scholars, private
guests in the families that harbor them, often at a very low price and
which take the place of the absent family. No boarders are found in
them except in a few gymnases like Pforta and by virtue of an ancient
endowment. The number, however, by virtue of the same endowment, is
limited; they dine, in groups of eight or ten,[6351] at the same table
with the professors lodged like themselves in the establishment,
while they enjoy for a playground a vast domain of woods, fields and
meadow.--The same in England, at Harrow, Eton and Rugby. Each professor,
here, is keeper of a boarding-house; he has ten, twenty and thirty boys
under his roof, eating at his table or at a table the head of which is
some lady of the house. Thus, the youth goes from the family into the
school, without painful or sudden contrast, and remains under a
system of things which suits his age and which is a continuation, only
enlarged, of domestic life.[6352]

The French college or lycée is quite the opposite. It operates against
the true spirit of the school, and has done so for eighty years being an
enterprise of the State, a local extension of a central enterprise, one
of the hundred branches of the great State university trunk, possessing
no roots of its own and with a directing or teaching staff composed
of functionaries similar to others, that is to say transferable,[6353]
restless and preoccupied with promotion, their principal motive for
doing well being the hope of a higher rank and of getting a better
situation. This almost separate them in advance from the establishment
in which they labor and,[6354] besides that, they are led, pushed on,
and restrained from above, each in his own particular sphere and in
his limited duty. The principal (proviseur) is confined to his
administrative position and the professor to his class, expressly
forbidden to leave it. No professor is "under any pretext to receive in
his house as boarders or day-scholars more than ten pupils."[6355]
No woman is allowed to lodge inside the lycée or college walls,
all,--proviseur, censor, cashier, chaplain, head-masters and assistants,
fitted by art or force to each other like cog-wheels, with no deep
sympathy, with no moral tie, without collective interests, a cleverly
designed machine which, in general, works accurately and smoothly, but
with no soul because, to have a soul, it is of prime necessity to have
a living body. As a machine constructed at Paris according to a unique
pattern and superposed on people and things from Perpignan to Douai and
from Rochelle to Besançon, it does not adapt itself to the requirements
of the public; it subjects its public to the exigencies, rigidity and
uniformity of its play and structure. Now, as it acts mechanically only,
through outward pressure, the human material on which it operates must
be passive, composed, not of diverse persons, but of units all alike;
its pupils must be for it merely numbers and names.--Owing to this our
internats, those huge stone boxes set up and isolated in each large
town, those lycées parceled out to hold three hundred, four hundred,
even eight hundred boarders, with immense dormitories, refectories and
playgrounds, recitation-rooms full to overflowing, and, for eight or ten
years, for one half of our children and youths, an anti-social unnatural
system apart, strict confinement, no going out except to march in
couples under the eyes of a sub-teacher who maintains order in the
ranks, promiscuity and life in common, exact and minute regularity under
equal discipline and constant constraint in order to eat, sleep, study,
play, promenade and the rest,--in short, COMMUNISM.

From the University this system is propagated among its rivals. In
conferring grades and passing examinations, it arranges and overburdens
the school program of study; hence, it incites in others what it
practices at home, the over-training of youth, and a factitious,
hot-house education. On the other hand, the internat is, for those who
decide on that, less troublesome than the day-school;[6356] also,
the more numerous the boarders in any one establishment, the less
the expense; thus, in order to exist in the face of the university
establishments, there must be internats and internats that are full.
Ecclesiastical establishments willingly resign themselves to all this;
they are even inclined that way; the Jesuits were the first ones, under
the old monarchy, who introduced cloistered and crowded boarding-houses.
In its essence, the Catholic church, like the French State, is a Roman
institution, still more exclusive and more governmental, resolved to
seize, hold on to, direct and control man entirely, and, first of all,
the child, head and heart, opinions and impressions, in order to stamp
in him and lastingly the definitive and salutary forms which are for him
the first condition of salvation. Consequently, the ecclesiastical cage
is more strict in its confinement than the secular cage; if the bars are
not so strong and not so rough, the grating, finer and more yielding, is
more secure, closer and better maintained; they do not allow any holes
or relaxation of the meshes; the precautions against worldly and family
interference, against the mistakes and caprices of individual effort,
are innumerable, and form a double or even triple network. For, to
school discipline is added religious discipline, no less compulsory,
just as rigid and more constant--daily pious exercises, ordinary
devotions and extraordinary ceremonies, spiritual guidance, influence of
the confessional and the example and behavior of a staff kept together
around the same work by the same faith. The closer the atmosphere, the
more powerful the action; the chances are that the latter will prove
decisive on the child sequestered, sheltered and brought up in a retort,
and that its intellect, faith and ideas, carefully cultivated, pruned
and always under direction, will exactly reproduce the model aimed
at.--For this reason, in 1876, 33,000 out of 46,000 pupils belonging
to the 309 ecclesiastical establishments of secondary instruction, are
internes,[6357] and the Catholic authorities admit that, in the 86 small
seminaries, no day-scholars, no future lay persons, are necessary.

This conclusion is perhaps reasonable in relation to the 23,000
pupils of the small seminaries, and for the 10,000 pupils in the great
seminaries; it is perhaps reasonable also for the future military
officers formed by the State at La Flèche, Saint-Cyr, Saumur, and on the
Borda.[6358] Whether future soldiers or future priests, their education
fits them for the life they are to lead; what they are to become as
adults, they already are as youths and children; the internat, under a
convent discipline or that of the barracks, qualifies them beforehand
for their profession. Since they must possess the spirit of it they must
contract its habits. Having accepted the form of their pursuit they more
easily accept its constraints and all the more that the constraints
of the regiment will be less for the young officer who recently was at
Saint-Cyr, and for the young ministrant in the rural parish who recently
was in the great seminary.--It is quite the reverse for the 75,000 other
internes of public or private establishments, ecclesiastic or secular,
for the future engineers, doctors, architects, notaries, attorneys,
advocates and other men of the law, functionaries, land-owners, chiefs
and assistants in industry, agriculture and commerce. For them the
internat affords precisely the opposite education required for a
secular and civil career. These carry away from the prolonged internat
a sufficient supply of Latin or of mathematics; but they are lacking
in two acquisitions of capital import: they have been deprived of two
indispensable experiences. On entering society the young man is ignorant
of its two principal personages, man and woman, as they are and as he is
about to meet them in society. He has no idea of them, or rather he has
only a preconceived, arbitrary and false conception of them.--He has
not dined, commonly, with a lady, head of the house, along with her
daughters and often with other ladies; their tone of voice, their
deportment at table, their toilette, their greater reserve, the
attentions they receive, the air of politeness all around, have not
impressed on his imagination the faintest lines of an exact notion;
hence, there is something wanting in him in relation to how he
should demean himself; he does not know how to address them, feels
uncomfortable in their presence; they are strange beings to him, new,
of an unknown species.--In a like situation, at table in the evening,
he has never heard men conversing together: he has not gathered in the
thousand bits of information which a young growing mind derives from
general conversation:

* about careers in life, competition, business, money, the domestic
fireside and expenses;

* about the cost of living which should always depend on income;

* about the gain which nearly always indicates the current rates of
labor and of the social subjection one undergoes;

* about the pressing, powerful, personal interests which are soon to
seize him by the collar and perhaps by the throat;

* about the constant effort required the incessant calculation, the
daily struggle which, in modern society, makes up the life of an
ordinary man.

All means of obtaining knowledge have been denied him, the contact with
living and diverse men, the images which the sensations of his eyes and
ears might have stamped on his brain. These images constitute the sole
materials of a correct, healthy conception; through them, spontaneously
and gradually, without too many deceptions or shocks, he might
have figured social life to himself, such as it is, its conditions,
difficulties, and its opportunities: he has neither the sentiment of it
nor even a premonition. In all matters, that which we call common sense
is never but an involuntary latent summary, the lasting, substantial
and salutary depot left in our minds after many direct impressions.
With reference to social life, he has been deprived of all these direct
impressions and the precious depot has never been formed in him.--e He
has scarcely ever conversed with his professors; their talk with him has
been about impersonal and abstract matters, languages, literature and
mathematics. He has spoken but little with his teachers, except
to contest an injunction or grumble aloud against reproof. Of real
conversation, the acquisition and exchange of ideas, he has enjoyed
none, except with his comrades: if, like him, all are internes, they
can communicate to each other only their ignorance. If day-scholars are
admitted, they are active smugglers or willing agents who bring into the
house and circulate forbidden books and obscene journals, along with
the filthy provocative and foul atmosphere of the streets.--Now, with
excitement of this kind or in this manner, the brains of these captives,
as puberty comes on and deliverance draws near, work actively and we
know in what sense[6359] and in what counter-sense, how remote from
observable and positive truth, how their imagination pictures society,
man and woman, under what simple and coarse appearances, with what
inadequacy and presumption, what appetites of liberated serfs and
juvenile barbarians, how, as concerns women, their precocious and turbid
dreams first become brutal and cynical,[6360] how, as concerns men,
their unballasted and precipitous thought easily becomes chimerical
and revolutionary.[6361] The downhill road is steep on the bad side, so
that, to put on the brake and stop, then to remount the hill, the young
man who takes the management of his life into his own hands, must know
how to use his own will and persevere to the end.

But a faculty is developed only by exercise, and the French internat
is the engine the most effective for hindering the exercise of this
one.--The youth, from the first to the last day of his internat, has
never been able to deliberate on, choose and decide what he should do
at any one hour of his schooldays; except to idle away time in
study-hours, and pay no attention at recitations, he could not exercise
his will. Nearly every act, especially his outward attitudes, postures,
immobility, silence, drill and promenades in rank, is only obedience to
orders. He has lived like a horse in harness, between the shafts of his
cart; this cart itself, kept straight by its two wheels, must not leave
the rectilinear ruts hollowed out and traced for it along the road; it
is impossible for the horse to turn aside. Besides, every morning he is
harnessed at the same hour, and every evening he is unharnessed at the
same hour; every day, at other hours, he has to rest and take his ration
of hay and oats. He has never been under the necessity of thinking about
all this, nor of looking ahead or on either side; from one end of the
year to the other, he has simply had to pull along guided by the bridle
or urged by the whip, his principal motives being only of two kinds: on
the one hand more or less hard guidance and urgings, and on the other
hand his recalcitrance, laziness and fatigue; he has been obliged to
choose between the two. For eight or ten years, his initiative is
reduced to that--no other employment of his free will. The education of
his free will is thus rudimentary or nonexistent.

On the strength of this our (French) system supposes that it is complete
and perfect. We cast the bridle on the young man's neck and hand him
over to his own government. We admit that, by extraordinary grace, the
scholar has suddenly become a man; that he is capable of prescribing and
following his own orders; that he has accustomed himself to weighing the
near and remote consequences of his acts, of imputing them to himself,
of believing himself responsible for them; that his conscience, suddenly
emancipated, and his reason, suddenly adult, will march straight on
athwart temptations and immediately recover from slips. Consequently, he
is set free with an allowance in some great city; he registers himself
under some Faculty and becomes one among ten thousand other students on
the sidewalks of Paris.--Now, in France, there is no university police
force to step in, as at Bonn or Göttingen, at Oxford or Cambridge, to
watch his conduct and punish him in the domicile and in public places.
At the schools of medicine, Law, Pharmacy, Fine-Arts, Charters, and
Oriental Languages, at the Sorbonne and at the École Centrale, his
emancipation is sudden and complete. When he goes from secondary
education to superior education he does not, as in England and in
Germany, pass from restricted liberty to one less restricted, but from a
monastic discipline to compete independence. In a furnished room, in the
promiscuity and incognito of a common hotel, scarcely out of college,
the novice of twenty years finds at hand the innumerable temptations of
the streets, the taverns, the bars, public balls, obscene publications,
chance acquaintances, and the liaisons of the gutter. Against all this
his previous education has disarmed him. Instead of creating a moral
force within him, the long and strict internat has maintained moral
debility. He yields to opportunity, to example; he goes with the
current, he floats without a rudder, he lets himself drift. As far as
hygiene, or money, or sex, is concerned, his mistakes and his follies,
great or small, are almost inevitable, while it is an average chance if,
during his three, four or five years of full license, he does not become
entirely corrupt.




IV. Cramming and Exams Compared to Apprenticeship

     Another vice of the system.--Starting-point of superior
     instruction in France.--Substitution of special State
     schools for free encyclopedic universities.--Effect of this
     substitution.--Examinations and competitions.--Intense,
     forced and artificial culture.--How it reaches an extreme.
     --Excess and prolongation of theoretical studies.
     --Insufficiency and tardiness of practical apprenticeship.
     --Comparison of this system with others, between France before
     1789 and England and the United States.--Lost forces.
     --Mistaken use and excessive expenditure of mental energy.--
     --The entire body of youth condemned to it after 1889.

Let us now consider another effect of the primitive institution, not
less pernicious. On leaving the lycée after the philosophy class, the
system supposes that a general education is fully obtained; there is not
question of a second one, ulterior and superior, that of universities.
In place of these encyclopedic universities, of which the object is
free teaching and the free progress of knowledge, it establishes special
State schools, separate from each other, each confined to a distinct
branch, each with a view to create, verify and proclaim a useful
capacity, each devoted to leading a young man along, step by step,
through a series of studies and tests up to the title or final diploma
which qualifies him for his profession, a diploma that is indispensable
or, at least, very useful since, without it, in many cases, one has no
right to practice his profession and which, thanks to it, in all cases,
enables one to enter on a career with favor and credit, in fair rank,
and considerably promoted.--On entering most careers called liberal,
a first diploma is exacted, that of bachelor of arts, or bachelor of
sciences, sometimes both, the acquisition of which is now a serious
matter for all French youth, a daily and painful preoccupation. To this
end, when about sixteen, the young man works, or, rather, is worked
upon. For one or two years, he submits to a forced culture, not in
view of learning and of knowing, but to answer questions well at an
examination, or tolerably well, and to obtain a certificate, on proof
or on semblance of proof, that he has received a complete classical
education.--Next after this, at the medical or law school, during the
four prescribed years, sixteen graduated inscriptions, four or five
superposed examinations, two or three terminal verifications, oblige
him to furnish the same proof, or semblance of proof, to verify, as each
year comes round, his assimilation of the lessons of the year, and thus
attest that, at the end of his studies, he possesses about the entire
scope and diversity of knowledge to which he is restricted.

In the schools where the number of pupils is limited, this culture,
carried still farther, becomes intense and constant. In the
École Centrale and in the commercial or agronomic schools, in the
Polytechnique or Normale, he is there all day and all night,--he is
housed in a barracks.--And the pressure on him is twofold--the pressure
of examinations and that of competition. On entering, on leaving, and
during his stay there, not only at the end of each year but every six
or three months, often every six weeks, and even every fortnight, he
is rated according to his compositions, exercises and interrogatories,
getting so many marks for his partial value, so many for his total value
and according to these figures, classed at a certain rank among
his comrades who are his rivals. To descend on the scale would be
disadvantageous and humiliating; to ascend on the scale is advantageous
and glorious. Driven by this motive, so strong in France, his principal
aim is to go up or, at least, not to go down; he devotes all his energy
to this; he expends none of it on either side or beyond; he allows
himself no diversion, he abstains from taking any initiative; his
restrained curiosity never ventures outside of the circle traced for
him; he absorbs only what he is taught and in the order in which it
is taught; he fills himself to the brim, but only to disgorge at the
examination and not to retain and hold on to; he runs the risk of
choking and when relieved, of remaining empty. Such is the régime of our
Grande Ecoles. They are systematic, energetic and prolonged system of
gardening; the State, the gardener-in-chief, receiving or selecting
plants which it undertakes to turn out profitably, each of its kind. To
this end, it separates the species, and ranges each apart on a bed of
earth; and here, all day long, it digs, weeds, rakes, waters, adds
one manure after another, applies its powerful heating apparatus and
accelerates the growth and ripening of the fruit. On certain beds
it plants are kept under glass throughout the year; in this way it
maintains them in a steady, artificial atmosphere, forcing them to more
largely imbibe the nutritive liquids with which it floods the ground,
thus causing them to swell and become hypertrophied, so as to produce
fruits or vegetables for show, and which it exposes and which bring it
credit; for all these productions look well, many of them superb,
while their size seems to attest their excellence; they are weighted
beforehand and the official labels with which they are decorated
announce the authentic weight.

During the first quarter, and even the first half, of the (19th)
century, the system remained almost unobjectionable; it had not yet
pushed things to excess. Down to 1850 and later, all that was demanded
of the young, in their examinations and competitions, was much less
the extent and minutia of knowledge than proofs of intelligence and the
promise of capacity: in a literary direction, the main object was to
verify whether the candidate, familiar with the classics, could write
Latin correctly and French tolerably well; in the sciences, if he
could, without help, accurately and promptly solve a problem; if, again
unaided, he could readily and accurately to the end, state a long series
of theorems and equations without divergence or faltering; in sum, the
object of the test was to verify in him the presence and degree of
the mathematical or literary faculty.--But, since the beginning of the
century, the old subdivided sciences and the new consolidated sciences
have multiplied their discoveries and, necessarily, all discoveries end
in finding their way into public instruction. In Germany, for them to
become installed and obtain chairs, encyclopedic universities are found,
in which free teaching, pliant and many-sided, rises of itself to the
level of knowledge.[6362] With us, for lack of universities, they have
had only special schools[6363]; here only could a place be found for
them and professors obtained. Henceforth, the peculiar character of
these schools has changed: they have ceased to be strictly special
and veritably professional.--Each school, being an individuality, has
developed apart and on its own account; its aim has been to install and
furnish under its own roof all the general, collateral, accessory and
ornamental studies which, far or near, could be of service to its own
pupils. No longer content with turning out competent and practical
men, it has conceived a superior type, the ideal model of the engineer,
physician, jurist, professor or architect. To produce this extraordinary
and desirable professional, it has designed some excessively difficult
impressive lectures.[6364] To be able to make use of these, it has given
the young man the opportunity not only to acquire abstract, multiple,
technical knowledge, and information, but also the complementary culture
and lofty general ideas, which render the specialist a true savant and a
man of a very broad mind.

To this end, it has appealed to the State. The State, the contractor
for public instruction, the founder of every new professional chair,
appoints the occupant, pays the salary and, when in funds, is not
ill-disposed, for it thus gains a good reputation, an increase of
granting power and a new functionary. Such is the why and wherefore, in
each school, of the multiplication of professorships: schools of law, of
medicine, of pharmacy, of charters, of fine arts, polytechnic, normal,
central, agronomic and commercial schools, each becoming, or tending to
become, a sort of university on a small scale, bringing together within
its walls the totality of teachings which, if the student profits by
them, renders him in his profession an accomplished personage.
Naturally, to secure attendance at these lectures, the school, in
concert with the State, adds to the exigencies of its examinations, and
soon, for the average of intellects and for health, the burden imposed
by it becomes too heavy. Particularly, in the schools to which admission
is gained only through competitions the extra load is still more
burdensome, owing to the greater crowd striving to pass; there are now
five, seven and even eleven candidates for one place.[6365] With this
crowd, it has been found necessary to raise and multiply the barriers,
urge the competitors to jump over them, and to open the door only to
those who jump the highest and in the greatest number. There is no other
way to make a selection among them without incurring the charge of
despotism and nepotism. It is their business to have sturdy legs and
make the best of them, then to submit to methodical training, to
practice and train all year and for several years in succession, in
order to pass the final test, without thinking of any but the barriers
in front of them on the race-course at the appointed date, and which
they must spring over to get ahead of their rivals.

At the present day[6366], after the complete course of classical
studies, four years in school no longer suffice for obtaining the
degrees of a doctor in medicine or doctor in law. Five or six years are
necessary. Two years are necessary between the baccalauréat ès-lettres
and the various licenses ès-lettres or sciences, and from these to the
corresponding aggrégations two, three years, and often more. Three years
of preparatory studies in mathematics and of desperate application lead
the young man to the threshold of the École Polytechnique; after that,
after two years in school and of no less sustained effort, the future
engineer passes three not less laborious years at the École des Ponts
et Chaussées or des Mines, which amounts to eight years of professional
preparation.[6367] Elsewhere, in the other schools, it is the same thing
with more or less excess. Observe how days and hours are spent during
this long period.[6368] The young men have attended lecture-courses,
masticated and re-masticated manuals, abbreviated abridgments, learned
by heart mementos and formulae, stored their memories with a vast
multitude of generalities and details. Every sort of preliminary
information, all the theoretical knowledge which, even indirectly,
may serve them in their future profession or which is of service in
neighboring professions, are classified in their brains, ready to come
forth at the first call, and, as proved by the examination, disposable
at a minute; they possess them, but nothing otherwise or beyond. Their
education has all tended to one side; they have undergone no practical
apprenticeship. Never have they taken an active part in or lent a hand
to any professional undertaking either as collaborators or assistants.

* The future professor, a new aggrégé at twenty-four years of age, who
issues from the École Normale, has not yet taught a class, except for a
fortnight in a Paris lycée.

* The future engineer who, at twenty-four or twenty-five years of age
leaves the École Centrale, or the École des Ponts, or École des Mines,
has never assisted in the working of a mine, in the heating of a blast
furnace, in the piercing of a tunnel, in the laying-out of a dike, of
a bridge or of a roadway. He is ignorant of the cost and has never
commanded a squad of workmen.

* If the future advocate or magistrate to be has put up with being a
notary's or lawyer's clerk, he will at twenty-five years of age, even
if he is a doctor of law with his insignia of three "white balls,"
know nothing of the business; he merely knows his codes; he has never
examined pleadings, conducted a case, drawn up an act or liquidated an
estate.

* From eighteen to thirty, the future architect who competes for a
prix de Rome may stay in the École des Beaux-Arts, draw plan after plan
there, and then, if he obtains the prix, pass five years at Rome, make
designs without end, multiply plans and restorations on paper, and at
last, at thirty-five years of age, return to Paris with the highest
titles, architect of the government, and with the aspiration to erect
edifices without having taken even a second or third part in the actual
construction of one single house.--

None of these men so full of knowledge know their trade and each, at
this late hour, is expected to act as an expert, improvising,[6369] in
haste and too fast, encountering many drawbacks at his own expense and
at the expense of others, along with serious risks for the first tasks
he undertakes.

Before 1789, says a witness of both the ancient and the modern régime,
[6370] young Frenchmen did not thus pass their early life. Instead
of dancing attendance so long on the threshold of a career, they were
inducted into it very early in life and at once began the race. With
very light baggage and readily obtained "they entered the army at
sixteen, and even fifteen years of age, at fourteen in the navy, and
a little later in special branches, artillery or engineering. In the
magistracy, at nineteen, the son of a conseiller-maître in parliament
was made a conseiller-adjoint without a vote until he reached
twenty-five; meanwhile, he was busy, active and sometimes was made a
reporter of a case. No less precocious were the admissions to the Cour
des Comptes, to the Cour des Aides, to inferior jurisdictions and into
the bureaus of all the financial administrations." Here, as elsewhere,
if any rank in law was exacted the delay that ensured was not apparent;
the Faculty examinations were only for forms sake; for a sum of money,
and after a more or less grave ceremonial, a needed diploma was obtained
almost without study.[6371]--Accordingly, it was not in school, but in
the profession, that professional instruction was acquired; strictly
speaking, the young man for six or seven years, instead of being a
student was an apprentice, that is to say a working novice under several
master-workmen, in their workshop, working along with them and learning
by doing, which is the best way of obtaining instruction. Struggling
with the difficulties of the work he at once became aware of his
incompetence;[6372] he became modest and was attentive; with his
masters, he kept silent, and listened, which is the only way to
understand. If he was intelligent he himself discovered what he lacked;
as he found this out he felt the need of supplying what he needed; he
sought, set his wits to work, and made choice of the various means;
freely and self-initiating he helped himself in his general or special
education. If he read books, it was not resignedly and for a recitation,
but with avidity and to comprehend them. If he followed lecture-courses
it was not because he was obliged to, but voluntarily, because he was
interested and because he profited by it.--Chancellor Pasquier was
magistrate at seventeen (in 1784), attended at the lycée the lectures of
Garat, La Harpe, Fourcroy and Duparcieux and, daily, at table or in the
evening, listened to his father and his friends discussing matters
which, in the morning, had been argued in the Palais de Justice or in
the Grand-Chambre. He imbibed a taste for his profession. Along with two
or three prominent advocates and other young magistrates like himself,
he inscribed his name for lectures at the house of the first president
of the first court of inquiry. Meanwhile, he went every evening into
society; he saw there with his own eyes the ways and interests of men
and women. On the other hand, at the Palais de Justice, a conseiller-
écoutant he sat for five years, alongside of the conseiller-juges and
often, the reporter of a case, he gave his opinion. After such a
novitiate, he was competent to form a judgment in civil or criminal
cases with experience, competency and authority. From the age of
twenty-five, he was prepared for and capable of serious duties. He had
only to live and perfect himself to become an administrator, deputy or
minister, a dignitary as we see under the first Empire, under the
Restoration, under the July monarchy, that is to say the best informed,
well-balanced, judicious political character and, at length, the man of
highest consideration of his epoch.[6373]

Such is also the process which, still at the present day (1890),
in England and in America secures future ability in the various
professions. In the hospital, in the mine, in factories, with the
architect, with the lawyer, the pupil, taken very young, goes through
his apprenticeship and subsequent stages about the same as a clerk
with us in an office or an art-student in the studio. Preliminarily and
before entering it, he has attended some general seminary lecture which
serves him as a ready-made basis for the observations he is about to
make. Meanwhile, there are very often technical courses within reach,
which he may attend at his leisure in order to give shape to his daily
experiences as these happen to accumulate. Under a régime of this stamp
practical capacity grows and develops of itself, just to that degree
which the faculties of the pupil warrant, and in the direction which his
future aims require, through the special work to which he wishes for the
time being to adapt himself. In this way, in England and in the United
States, the young man soon succeeds in developing all he is good for.
From the age of twenty-five and much sooner, if the substance and
bottom are not wanting, he is not only a useful subordinate, but again a
spontaneous creator, not merely a wheel but besides this a motor force.
In France, where the inverse process has prevailed and become more and
more Chinese at each generation, the total of the force lost is immense.

The most productive period of human life extends from fifteen or sixteen
up to twenty-five or twenty-six; here are seven or eight years of
growing energy and of constant production, buds, flowers and fruit;
during this period the young man sketches out his original ideas. But,
that these ideas may be born in him, sprout, and flourish they must,
at this age, profit by the stimulating or repressive influence of the
atmosphere in which they are to live later on; here only are they formed
in their natural and normal environment; their germs depend for their
growth on the innumerable impressions due to the young man's sensations,
daily, in the workshop, in the mine, in the court-room, in the studio,
on the scaffolding of a building, in the hospital, on seeing tools,
materials and operations, in talking with clients and workmen, in doing
work, good or bad, costly or remunerative; such are the minute and
special perceptions of the eyes and the ears, of touch and even smell
which, involuntarily gathered in and silently elaborated, work together
in him and suggest, sooner or later, this or that new combination,
economy, perfection or invention.[6374] The young Frenchman, just at
this fecund age, is deprived of all these precious contacts, of all
these assimilating and indispensable elements. During seven or eight
years, he is shut up in school, remote from the direct and personal
experience which might have given him an exact and vivifying notion of
men and things, and of the various ways of handling them. All this time
his inventive faculties are deliberately sterilized; he can be nothing
but a passive recipient; whatever he might have produced under the other
system he cannot produce under this one; the balance of debit and
credit is utter loss.--Meanwhile, the cost has been great. Whilst the
apprentice, the clerk busy with his papers in his office, the interne
with his apron standing by the bedside of the patient in the hospital,
pays by his services, at first for his instruction, then for his
breakfast, and ends in gaining something besides, at least his
pocket-money, the student under the Faculty, or the pupil in a special
school is educated and lives at the expense of his family or of the
State; he gives back in exchange not work that is useful to mankind,
none that is worth anything on the market; his actual consumption is not
compensated for by his actual production. Undoubtedly, he cherishes the
hope that some day or other he will obtain compensation, that we will
refund later and largely both capital and interest, and all the advances
made; in other words, his future services are discounted and, as far as
he is concerned, he speculates on a long credit.--It remains to be seen
whether the speculation is a good one; whether, at last, the receipts
will cover the expenses, in short, what will be the net or average
returns on the man thus fashioned.[6375]

Now, among the forces expended, the most important to take into account
is the time and attention of the pupil, the sum of his efforts, this or
that quantity of mental energy; he has only a limited provision of
this, and, not only is the proportion of this which the system consumes
excessive, but, again, the application of it which the system enforces
is not remunerative. The provision is exhausted and by a wrong use of
it, with scarcely any profit.--In our lycées, the pupil sits at his task
more than eleven hours a day; in a certain ecclesiastical college it is
twelve hours, and, from the age of twelve years, through the necessity
of being first in competition as well as for securing the greatest
number of admissions through various examinations.--At the end of this
secondary education there is a graduated scale of successive test, and
first the baccalauréat. Fifty out of one hundred candidates fail and
the examiners are indulgent.[6376] This proves, first of all, that the
rejected have profited by their studies; but it likewise proves that the
program of the examination is not adapted to the general run of minds,
nor to the native faculties of the human majority; that many young men
capable of learning by the opposite method learn nothing by this one;
that education, such as it is, with the kind and greatness of the mental
labor it imposes, with its abstract and theoretical style, is beyond
the capacity of the average mind.--Particularly, during the last year
of classical studies, the pupils have had to follow the philosophy
lectures: in the time of M. Laromiquière, this might be useful to them;
in the time of M. Cousin, the course, so far, did but little harm; at
the present day, impregnated with neo-Kantism, it injects into minds of
eighteen, seventeen, and even sixteen years, a metaphysical muddle as
cumbersome as the scholasticism of the fourteenth century, terribly
indigestible and unhealthy for the stomachs of novices; the swallow
even to bursting and throw it off at the examination just as it comes,
entirely raw for lack of the capacity to assimilate it.--Often, after
failure at the baccalauréat, or on entering the preparatory or Grande
Écoles, the young people go into, or are put into, what they call "a
box" or an "oven" a preparatory internat, similar to the boxes in which
silkworms are raised and to the ovens where the eggs are hatched. In
more exact language it is a mechanical "gaveuse"[6377] in which they
are daily crammed; through this constant, forced feeding, their
real knowledge is not increased, nor their mental vigor; they are
superficially fattened and, at the end of the year, or in eighteen
months, they present themselves on the appointed day, with the
artificial and momentary volume they need for that day, with the bulk,
surface, polish and all the requisite externals, because these externals
are the only ones that the examination verifies and imposes.[6378] Less
harshly, but in the same manner and with the same object, operate
the special education services which, inside our colleges and lycées,
prepare young men for the École de Saint-Cyr and for the polytechnic,
naval, central, normal, agricultural, commercial and forestry schools;
in these too, the studies are cramming machines which prepare the pupil
for examination purposes. In the like manner, above secondary education,
all our special schools are public cramming machines;[6379] alongside of
them are private schools advertised and puffed in the newspapers and by
posters of the walls, preparing young men for the license degree in Law
and for the third or fourth examinations in Medicine. Some day or other,
others will probably exist to prepare them for Treasury inspectors, for
the "Cour des Comptes," for diplomacy, by competition, the same as for
the medical profession, for a hospital surgeon and for aggregation in
law, medicine, letters or sciences.

Undoubtedly, some minds, very active and very robust, withstand this
régime; all they have been made to swallow is absorbed and digested.
After leaving school and having passed through all grades they preserve
the faculty of learning, investigating and inventing intact, and compose
the small élite of scholars, litterateurs, artists, engineers and
physicians who, in the international exposition of superior talent,
maintain France in its ancient rank.[6380]--But the rest, in very great
majority, nine out of ten at least, have lost their time and trouble,
many years of their life and years that are useful, important and even
decisive: take at once one-half or two-thirds of those who present
themselves at the examinations, I mean the rejected, and then, among the
admitted who get diplomas, another half or two-thirds that is to say,
the overworked. Too much has been required of them by exacting that, on
such a day, seated or before the blackboard, for two entire hours, they
should be living repertories of all human knowledge; in effect, such
they are, or nearly so, that day, for two hours; but, a month later,
they are so no longer; they could not undergo the same examination;
their acquisitions, too numerous and too burdensome, constantly drop of
their minds and they make no new ones. Their mental vigor has given way,
the fecund sap has dried up; the finished man appears, often a finished
man content to be put away, to be married, and plod along indefinitely
in the same circle, entrenched in his restricted vocation and doing his
duty, but nothing more. Such are the average returns--assuredly, the
profits do not make up for the expenses. In England and in America
where, as before 1789 in France, the inverse method is followed, the
returns are equal or superior,[6381] and they are obtained with greater
facility, with more certainty, at an age less tardy, without imposing
such great and unhealthy efforts on the young man, such large
expenditure by the State, and such long delays and sacrifices on
families.[6382]

Now, in the four Faculties of Law, Medicine, Science and Letters, there
are this year 22,000 students; add to these the pupils of the special
schools and those who study with the hope of entering them, in all
probably 30,000. But there is no need of counting them; since the
suppression of the one-year voluntariat, the entire body of youths
capable of study, who wish to remain only one year in barracks and not
remain there to get brutalized during three years, flocks to the benches
of the lycée or to those of a Faculty.[6383] The sole object of the
young man is not, as before, to reach the baccalauréat; it is essential
that he should be admitted, after a competition, into one of the
special schools, or obtain the highest grades or diplomas in one of the
Faculties; in all cases he is bound to successfully undergo difficult
and multiplied examinations. At present time (1890), there is no place
in France for an education in the inverse sense, nor for any other of a
different type. Henceforth, no young man, without condemning himself to
three years of barrack life, can travel at an early age for any length
of time, or form his mind at home by free and original studies, stay
in Germany and follow speculative studies in the universities, or go to
England or to America to derive practical instruction from factory or
farm. Captured by our system, he is forced to surrender himself to the
mechanical routine which fills his mind with fictitious tools, with
useless and cumbersome acquisitions that impose on him in exchange
an exorbitant expenditure of mental energy and which is very like to
convert him into a mandarin.




V. Public instruction in 1890.

     Public instruction since 1870.--Agreement between the
     Napoleonic and Jacobin conception.--Extension and
     aggravation of the system.--The deductive process of the
     Jacobin mind.--Its consequences.--In superior and in
     secondary instruction.--In primary instruction.--Gratuitous,
     obligatory and secular instruction.

Such is the singular and final result brought about by the institution
of the year X (or 1801), due to the intervention of the grossly leveling
Jacobin spirit.[6384] Indeed, since 1871, and especially since 1879,
this spirit, through Napoleonic forms, has given breath, impulse and
direction, and these forms suit it. On the principle that education
belongs to the State, Napoleon and the old Jacobins were in accord;
what he in fact established they had proclaimed as a dogma; hence the
structure of his university-organisation was not objectionable to them;
on the contrary, it conformed to their instincts. Hence, the reason why
the new Jacobins, inheritors of both instinct and dogma, immediately
adopted the existing system; none was more convenient, better calculated
to meet their views, better adapted in advance to do their work.
Consequently, under the third Republic,[6385] as under anterior
governments, the school machinery continues to turn and grind in the
same rut. Through the same working of its mechanism, under the same
impulse of its unique and central motor, conforming to the same
Napoleonic and Jacobin idea of the teaching State, it is a formidable
concept which, more intrusive every year, more widely and more
rigorously applied, more and more excludes the opposite concept. This
would be the remission of education to those interested in it, to those
who possess rights, to parents, to free and private enterprises which
depend only on personal exertions and on families, to permanent,
special, local corporations, proprietary and organized under status,
governed, managed, and supported by themselves. On this model, a few
men of intelligence and sensibility, enlightened by what is accomplished
abroad, try to organize regional universities in our great academic
centers. The State might, perhaps, allow, if not the enterprise itself,
then at least something like it, but nothing more. Through its right
of public administration, through the powers of its Council of State,
through its fiscal legislation, through the immemorial prejudices of
its jurists, through the routine of its bureaus, it is hostile to
a corporate personality. Never can such a project be considered a
veritable civil personage; if the State consents to endow a group of
individuals with civil powers, it is always on condition that they be
subject to its narrow tutelage and be treated as minors and children.
--Besides, these universities, even of age, are to remain as they are,
so many dispensaries of diplomas. They are no longer to serve as an
intellectual refuge, an oasis at the end of secondary instruction, a
station for three or four years for free curiosity and disinterested
self-culture. Since the abolition of the volontariat for one year, a
young Frenchman no longer enjoys the leisure to cultivate himself in
this way; free curiosity is interdicted; he is too much harassed by
a too positive interest, by the necessity of obtaining grades and
diplomas, by the preoccupations of examinations, by the limitations of
age; he has no time to lose in experiments, in mental excursions, in
pure speculations. Henceforth, our system allows him only the régime to
which we see him subject, namely the rush, the puffing and blowing, the
gallop without stopping on a race-course, the perilous jumps at regular
distances over previously arranged and numbered obstacles. Instead of
being restricted and attenuated, the disadvantages of the Napoleonic
institution spread and grow worse, and this is due to the way in which
our rulers comprehend it, the original, hereditary way of the Jacobin
spirit.

When Napoleon built his University he did it as a statesman and a man
of business, with the foresight of a contractor and a practical man,
calculating outlay and receipts, means and resources, so as to produce
at once and with the least expense, the military and civil tools which
he lacked and of which he always had too few because he consumed too
many: to this precise, definite purpose he subjected and subordinated
all the rest, including the theory of the educational State; she was for
him simply a résumé, a formula, a setting. On the contrary, for the
old Jacobins, she was an axiom, a principle, an article in the Social
Contract; by this contract, the State had charge of public education;
it had the right and its duty was to undertake this and manage it. The
principle being laid down, as convinced theorists and blindly following
the deductive method, the derived consequences from it and rushed ahead,
with eyes shut, into practical operation, with as much haste as vigor,
without concerning themselves with the nature of human materials, of
surrounding realities, of available resources, of collateral effects,
nor of the total and final effect. Likewise with the new Jacobins of the
present day, according to them, since instruction is a good thing,[6386]
the broader and deeper it is the better; since broad and deep
instruction is very good, the State should, with all its energy and by
every means in its power, inculcate it on the greatest possible number
of children, boys and adolescents. Such, henceforth, is the word of
command from on high, transmitted down to the three stages of superior,
secondary and primary instruction.[6387]

Consequently, from 1876 to 1890,[6388] the State expends for superior
instruction, in buildings alone, 99,000,000 francs. Formerly, the
receipts of the Faculties about covered their expenses; at the present
day, the State allows them annually 6,000,000 francs more than their
receipts. It has founded and supports 221 new (professional) chairs, 168
complementary courses of lectures, 129 conférences and, to supply
the attendants, it provides, since 1877, 300 scholarships for those
preparing for the license and, since 1881, 200 scholarships for those
preparing for the aggrégation. Similarly, in secondary instruction,
instead of 81 lycées in 1876, it has 100 in 1887[6389]; instead of
3,820 scholarships in 1876, it distributes, in 1887, 10,528; instead
of 2,200,000 francs expended for this branch of instruction in 1857, it
expends 18,000,000 in 1889.--This overload of teaching caused overloaded
exams: it was necessary to include more science than in the past to
curriculum of the grades delivered and determined by the State. "This
was what was then done whenever possible."[6390] Naturally, and through
contagion, the obligation of possessing more knowledge descended to
secondary instruction. In effect, after this date, we see neo-Kantian
philosophy descending like hail from the highest metaphysical ether
down upon the pupils in the terminal class of the lycées, to the lasting
injury of the seventeen-year old brains. Again, after this date, we see
in the class of special mathematics[6391] an abundance of complicated,
confusing problems so that, today, the candidate for the Polytechnic
School must, to gain admission, expound theorems that were only mastered
by his father after he got there.--Hence, "boxes" and "ovens", private
internats, the preparatory secular or ecclesiastical schools and other
"scholastic cramming-machines"; hence, the prolonged mechanical effort
to introduce into each intellectual sponge all the scientific fluid it
can contain, even to saturation, and maintain it in this extreme state
of perfection if only for two hours during an examination, after which
it may rapidly subside and shrink. Hence, that mistaken use, that
inordinate expenditure, that precocious waste of mental energy, and that
entire pernicious system which overburden for a substantial period the
young, not for their advantage, but, on reaching maturity, to their
intellectual detriment.

To reach the uncultivated masses, to address popular intellect and
imagination, one must use absolute, simple slogans. In the matter of
primary instruction, the simplest and most absolute slogan is that
which promises and offers it to all children, boys and girls, not merely
universal, but again, complete and gratuitous. To this end, from 1878
to 1891,[6392] the State has expended for school buildings and
installations 582,000,000 francs; for salaries and other expenses it
furnished the latter year 131,000,000. Somebody pays for all this, and
it is the tax-payer, and by force; aided by gendarmes, the collector
puts his hand forcibly into all pockets, even those containing only
sous, and withdraws these millions. Gratuitous instruction sounds well
and seems to designate a veritable gift, a present from the great vague
personage called the State, and whom the general public dimly sees
on the distant horizon as a superior, independent being, and hence a
possible benefactor. In reality, his presents are made with our money,
while his generosity consists in the fine name with which he here gilds
his fiscal exactions, a new constraint added to so many others which he
imposes on us and which we endure.[6393]--Besides, through instinct and
tradition, the State is naturally inclined to multiply constraints, and
this time there is no concealment. From six to thirteen years of age,
primary instruction becomes obligatory.[6394] The father is required to
prove that his children receive it, if not at the public school at least
in a private school or at home. During these seven years it continues,
and ten months are devoted to it each year. The school takes and keeps
the child three hours in the morning and three hours in the afternoon;
it pours into these little heads all that is possible in such a length
of time, all that they can hold and more too,--spelling, syntax,
grammatical and logical analysis, rules of composition and of
style, history, geography, arithmetic, geometry, drawing, notions of
literature, politics, law, and finally a complete moral system, "civic
morality."

It is obviously very useful for every adult to be able to read, write
and reckon. Who, then, can criticize a Government because it insists
that all children be taught these basic skills? But for the same reason
and on the same principle, provision could be made for swimming-schools
in every village and town on the sea-coast, or on the streams and
rivers; every boy should be obliged to learn how to swim.--That it may
be useful for every boy and girl in the United States to pass through
the entire system of primary instruction is peculiar to the United
States and is comprehensible in an extensive and new country where
multiplied and diverse pursuits present themselves on all sides;[6395]
where every career may lead to the highest pinnacle; where a
rail-splitter may become president of the republic; where the adult
often changes his career and, to afford him the means for improvising a
competency at each change, he must possess the elements of every kind of
knowledge; where the wife, being for the man an object of luxury, does
not use her arms in the fields and scarcely ever uses her hands in the
household.[6396]--It is not the same in France. Nine out of ten pupils
in the primary school are sons or daughters of peasants or of workmen
and will remain in the condition of their parents; the girl, adult, will
do washing and cooking all her life at home or abroad; the son, adult,
confined to his occupation will work all his life in a shop or on
his own or another's field. Between this destiny of the adult and the
plenitude of his primary instruction, the disproportion is enormous; it
is evident that his education does not prepare him for the life he has
to lead; but for another life, less monotonous, under less restraint,
more cerebral, and of which a faint glimpse disgusts him with his
own;[6397] at least, it will disgust him for a long time and frequently,
until the day comes when his school acquisitions, wholly superficial,
shall have evaporated in contact with the ambient atmosphere and
no longer appear to him other than empty phrases; in France, for an
ordinary peasant or workman, so much the better if this day comes
early.[6398]

At the very least, three quarters of these acquisitions are for him
superfluous. He derives no advantage from them, neither for inward
satisfaction or for getting ahead in the world; and yet they must all be
gone through with. In vain would the father of a family like to curtail
his children's mental stores to useful knowledge, to reading, writing
and arithmetic, to giving to these just the necessary time, at the
right season, three months for two or three winters, to keep his
twelve-year-old daughter at home to help her mother and take care of the
other children, to keep his boy of ten years for pasturing cattle or for
goading on the oxen at the plow.[6399] In relation to his children and
their interests as well as for his own necessities, he is suspect, he is
not a good judge; the State has more light and better intentions than he
has. Consequently, the State has the right to constrain him and in fact,
from above, from Paris, the State does this. Legislators, as formerly in
1793, have acted according to Jacobin procedure, as despotic theorists.
They have formed in their minds a uniform, universal, simple type, that
of a child from six to thirteen years as they want to see it, without
adjusting the instruction they impose on it to its prospective
condition, making abstraction of his positive and personal interest, of
his near and certain future, setting the father aside, the natural
judge and competent measurer of the education suitable to his son and
daughter, the sole authorized arbiter for determining the quality,
duration, circumstances and counterpoise of the mental and moral
manipulation to which these young lives, inseparable from his own, are
going to be subject away from home.--Never, since the Revolution,
has the State so vigorously affirmed its omnipotence, nor pushed in
encroachments on and intrusion into the proper domain of the individual
so far, even to the very center of domestic life. Note that in 1793
and 1794 the plans of Lepelletier de Saint-Fargeau and of Saint-Just
remained on paper; the latter for ten years have been in practical
operation.[63100]

At bottom, the Jacobin is a sectarian, propagator of his own faith, and
hostile to the faith of others. Instead of admitting that that people's
conceptions are different and rejoicing that there are so many of them,
each adapted to the human group which believes in it, and essential to
believers to help them along, he admits but one, his own, and he
uses power to force it upon adherents. He also has his own creed,
his catechism, his imperative formula, and he imposes them.--
Henceforth,[63101] education shall be not only free and obligatory but
again secular and nothing but secular. Thus far, the great majority of
parents, most of the fathers and all of the mothers, were desirous that
it should at the same time be religious. Without speaking of professing
Christians, many heads of families, even lukewarm, indifferent or
skeptical, judge that this mixture of the two is better for children,
and especially for girls. According to them, knowledge and faith should
not enter into these young minds separate, but combined and as one
aliment; at least, in the particular case in which they were concerned,
this, in their view, was better for the child, for themselves, for the
internal discipline of the household, for good order at home for which
they were responsible, for the maintenance of respect, and for the
preservation of morals. For this reason, the municipal councils,
previous to the laws of 1882 and 1886, still free to choose instruction
and teachers as they pleased, often entrusted their school to the
Christian Brethren or Sisters under contract for a number of years, at
a fixed price, and all the more willingly because this price was very
low.[63102] Hence, in 1886, there were in the public schools 10,029
teachers of the Christian Brethren and 39,125 of the Sisters. Now, since
1886, the law insists that public instruction shall be not only secular,
but that lay teachers only shall teach; the communal schools, in
particular, shall be all secularized, and, to complete this operation,
the legislator fixes the term of delay; after that, no member of a
congregation, monk or nun, shall teach in any public school.

Meanwhile, each year, by virtue of the law, the communal schools are
secularized by hundreds, by fair means or foul; although this is by
right a local matter, the municipal councils are not consulted; the
heads of families have no voice in this private, domestic interest which
touches them to the quick, and such a sensitive point. And likewise, in
the cost of the operation their part is officially imposed them; at the
present day,[63103] in the sum-total of 131,000,000 francs which primary
instruction costs annually, the communes contribute 50,000,000 francs;
from 1878 to 1891, in the sum-total of 582,000,000 francs expended
on school buildings, they contributed 312,000,000 francs.--If certain
parents are not pleased with this system they have only to subscribe
amongst themselves, build a private school at their own expense, and
support Christian Brothers or Sisters in these as teachers. That is
their affair; they will not pay one cent less to the commune, to the
department or to the State, so that their tax will be double and they
will pay twice, first for the primary instruction which they dislike,
and next for the primary instruction which suits them.--Thousands of
private schools are founded on these conditions. In 1887,[63104] these
had 1,091,810 pupils, about one fifth of all children inscribed in
all the primary schools. Thus one fifth of the parents do not want the
secular system for their children; at least, they prefer the other
when the other is offered to them; but, to offer it to them, very large
donations, a multitude of voluntary subscriptions, are necessary. The
distrust and aversion which this system, imposed from above excites can
be measured by the number of parents and children and by the greatness
of the donations and subscriptions. Note, moreover, that in many of
the other communes, in all places where the resources, the common
understanding and the generosity of individual founders and donators
are not sufficient, the parents, even distrustful and hostile, are now
constrained to send their children to the school which is repugnant
to them.--In order to be more precise, imagine an official and daily
journal entitled Secular journal, obligatory and gratuitous for children
from six to thirteen, founded and supported by the State, at an average
cost of 582,000,000 francs to set it agoing, and 131,0000,000 francs
of annual expenditure, the whole taken from the purses of taxpayers,
willingly or not; take it for granted that the 6,000,000 children, girls
and boys, from six to thirteen, are forced subscribers to this journal,
that they get it every day except Sundays, that, every day, they are
bound to read the paper for six hours. The State, through toleration,
allows the parents who do not like the official sheet to take another
which suits them; but, that another may be within reach, it is necessary
that local benefactors, associated together and taxed by themselves,
should be willing to establish and support it; otherwise, the father
of a family is constrained to read the secular journal to his
children, which he deems badly composed and marred by superfluities and
shortcomings, in brief edited in an objectionable spirit. Such is the
way in which the Jacobin State respects the liberty of the individual.

On the other hand, through this operation, it has extended and fortified
itself; it has multiplied the institutions it directs and the persons
whom it controls. To direct, inspect, augment and diffuse its primary
instruction, the State has maintained 173 normal schools for teachers,
male and female, 736 schools and courses of lectures in primary,
superior and professional instruction, 66,784 elementary schools, 3,597
maternal schools, and about 115,000 functionaries, men and women.[63105]
Through these 115,000 officials, representatives and megaphones,
Secular Reason, which is enthroned at Paris, sends its voice even to
the smallest and most remote villages. It is this Reason, as our rulers
define it, with the inclinations, limitations and prejudices they have
need of, the near-sighted and half-domesticated grand-daughter of that
other formidable sightless, brutal and mad grandmother, who, in 1793
and 1794, sat under the same name and in the same place. With less of
violence and blundering, but by virtue of the same instinct and with
the same one-sidedness, the latter employs the same propaganda. She
too wants to seize the new generations, and through her programs and
manuals, her insinuations and summaries of the Ancient Régime, the
Revolution and the Empire, by her perceptions of recent or contemporary
matters, through her formulae and suggestions in relation to moral,
social and political affairs, it is of her and she alone, that she
preaches and glorifies.




VI. Summary.

     Total and actual effect of the system.--Increasing
     unsuitableness between early education and adult life.
     --Change for the worse in the mental and moral balance of
     contemporary youth.

In this manner does the education by the State end. (in 1890) When a
matter is taken out of the hands of those who are concerned and handed
over to a third and differently motivated party, it cannot end well;
sooner or later, this basic defect will dominate and lead to unexpected
results. In this case a growing disparity between education and life.
On the three levels of instruction, infancy, adolescence and youth, the
actual theoretical and direct instruction is extended and overloaded
with the examination, the grade, the diploma and the certificate in view
only. To this end any and all means is used; through the application of
an unnatural and anti-social system competition, through excessive delay
in practical apprenticeship, through the internat, through artificial
stimulation and mechanical cramming, and through overwork. There is no
consideration of the future, of the adult epoch and the duties of the
complete man. The real world in which the young man is about to enter,
the state of society to which he must adapt or resign himself, the human
struggle in which he must defend himself or keep erect is left out. For
this new life he is neither armed, equipped, drilled and hardened.
That solid common sense, that determination and those steady nerves,
indispensable tools in life, are not dispensed by our schools; quite the
contrary; far from qualifying him for his approaching independence the
schools disqualify him for it. Accordingly, his entrance into the world
and his first steps on the field of practical life are generally a
series of painful failures; as a consequence he remains bruised, often
for a long time, offended sometimes permanently crippled. This is a rude
and dangerous ordeal; the moral and mental balance is altered and
risks never being restored; his illusions vanish too suddenly and too
completely. His deceptions have been too great and his disappointment
too severe. Sometimes, among close friends, embittered and worn out like
himself, he is tempted to tell us:

"Through your education you have led us to believe, or you have let us
believe, that the world is made in a certain fashion. You have deceived
us. It is much uglier, more dull, dirtier, sadder and harder, at least
in our opinion and to our imagination: you judge us as overexcited and
disordered; if so, it is your fault. For this reason, we curse and scoff
at your world and reject your pretended truths which, for us, are lies,
including those elementary and primordial verities which you declare
are evident to common sense, and on which you base your laws, your
institutions, your society, your philosophy, your sciences and your
arts."

This is what our contemporary youth, through their tastes, opinions,
vague desires in letters, arts and life, have loudly proclaimed for the
past fifteen years.[63106] (Written in 1890.)

*****

POSTSCRIPT:

It is only fair to the French to note that they have, since the law
called Debré in 1959 allowed the Catholic schools to operate freely with
teachers paid by the state provided they,

* use qualified teachers,

* have a contract with the government submitting to inspection of their
buildings etc.,

* submit to government study programs,

* regular accepted hours etc. (SR.)


*****


[Footnote 6301: Ordinance of Oct. 4, 1814.]

[Footnote 6302: Liard, "L'Enseignement supérieur pendant la
Restauration." (Rev. des deux Mondes, number for Feb.15, 1892.) Decree
of April 8, 1814.]

[Footnote 6303: Ordinance of April 17, 1815 (to suppress the
university pay and separate the sole University into seventeen regional
universities.) This ordinance, dating from the last days of the first
Restoration, is repealed the first days of the second Restoration, Aug.
15, 1815.]

[Footnote 6304: "The Modern Régime," p.316. (Laff. II 581-582.)]

[Footnote 6305: Basset, censor of studies in the Charlemagne college,
"Coup d'oeil général sur l'Éducation et l'Instruction publique en France"
(1816), p. 21. (State of the University in 1815.)]

[Footnote 6306: Today, in year 2000, the educational machinery in France
employs more than 1 million teachers and, as all children are in school
from the age of 3 to at least 16 years of age, there are more than 12
million children and students under the tutelage of the state. (SR.)]

[Footnote 6307: Political party terms.]

[Footnote 6308: Ordinance of Feb.21, 1821, article 13, and Report by M.
de Corbières: "The youth clamour for a religious and moral direction..
.. The religious direction belongs by right to the highest pastors:
it is proper to ask from them for these establishments (the university
colleges) for constant supervision and to legally call on them to
suggest all measures that they may deem necessary."]

[Footnote 6309: Liard, "L'Enseignement supérieur," 840 (Speech by
Benjamin Constant in the Chamber of Députés, May 18th, 1827).]

[Footnote 6310: Ordinances of Novem. 21, 1822, article I, and Feb. 2,
1823, article II.]

[Footnote 6311: Ordinances of Sep. 6, 1822, and of Feb. 21st, 1821,
title VI, with report by M. de Corbières.]

[Footnote 6312: Liard, ibid., p. 840. (Circular addressed to the rectors
by Monseigneur Freyssinous immediately after his installation:)
"In summoning a man of sacerdotal character to the head of public
instruction, His Majesty has made all France well aware of his great
desire to have the youth of his kingdom brought up in monarchical and
religious sentiments.... Whoever has the misfortune to live without
religion, or not to be devoted to the reigning family, ought to be
sensible of what he lacks in becoming a worthy instructor of youth. He
is to be pitied and is even culpable."--"Ambroise Rendu," by Eug. Rendu,
p. III (circular to rectors in 1817). "Make it known to the MM. the
bishops and to all ecclesiastics that, in the work of education, you are
simply auxiliaries, and that the object of primary instruction is above
all to fortify religious instruction."]

[Footnote 6313: De Riancey, "Histoire de l'instruction publique,"
II.,312. (Apropos of the lectures by Guizot and Cousin, stopped by Mgr.
de Freyssinous:) "He did not believe that a Protestant and a philosopher
could treat the most delicate questions of history and science with
impartiality, and through a fatal effect of the monopoly he found
himself placed between his conscience and the law. On this occasion he
sacrificed the law."]

[Footnote 6314: Liard, ibid., p.837. After 1820, "a series of measures
are passed which, little by little, give back its primitive constitution
to the University and even end in incorporating it more closely with
power than under the Empire."]

[Footnote 6315: Here Taine describes the very principle of democratic
government in a welfare state. "Do not worry, demand and we supply,
the rich will pay!!!" Taine understood and foresaw the riches which the
industrial society could be made to produce but neither he nor anyone
else could foresee that Human Rights should include central heating,
housing, running hot and cold water, television, free health care, a car
and worldwide tourism..(SR.)]

[Footnote 6316: See "The Modern Régime," I., pp.183, 202.]

[Footnote 6317: Maggiolo, "des Ecoles en Lorraine." (Details on several
communal schools.) 3rd part, pp. 9-50.--Cf. Jourdain, "le Budget de
l'Instruction publique," 1857, passim. (Appropriation by the State for
primary instruction in 1829, 100,000 francs; in 1832, 1,000,000 francs;
in 1847, 2,400,000 francs;--for secondary instruction, in 1830, 920,000
francs; in 1848, 1,500,000 francs; in 1854, 1,549,241 francs. (The towns
support their own communal colleges.)--Liard," Universités et Facultés,"
p. II. In 1829, the budget of Faculties does not reach 1,000,000 francs;
in 1848, it is 2,876,000 francs.]

[Footnote 6318: Law of Floreal 11, year X, article 4.--"Rapport sur
la statistique comparée de l'enseignement primaire," 1880, vol. II.,p.
133;--31 per cent of the pupils in the public schools were gratuitously
admitted in 1837; 57 per cent in 1876-77. The congregationists admit
about two thirds of their scholars gratuitously and one third for pay.]

[Footnote 6319: Cf. Jourdain, Ibid., pp. 22, 143, 161.]

[Footnote 6320: Cf. Jourdain, Ibid., p.287. (The fixed salary and
examination-fees are included in the above figures.) In 1850, the
regular salary of the professor in the Paris Medical Faculty is reduced
from 7000 to 6000 francs. In 1849, the maximum of all the salaries of
the Law professors is limited to 12,000 francs.]

[Footnote 6321: Read, among other biographies, "Ambroise Rendu," by Eug.
Rendu.]

[Footnote 6322: This, in France, lasted until the Communists in 1946
insisted as a price for their participation in governing France that
the right to strike for civil servants be inserted in the French
Constitution. In this way Stalin was sure to trouble France a great
deal. (SR.)]

[Footnote 6323: "Rapport sur la statistique comparée de l'enseignement
primaire," 1880, vol. II.,pp.8, 110, 206.--Law of March 15, 1850,
"Exposé des motifs," by M. Beugnot.]

[Footnote 6324: "Revue des Deux Mondes," number of Aug.15, 1869, pp.
909, 911. (Article by M. Boissier.)]

[Footnote 6325: Act of Nov. 9, 1818. (Down to 1850 and after, the
University so arranged its teaching (in high school) as not to come
in conflict with the clergy on the debatable grounds of history. For
example, at the end of the 8th grade the history of the Roman Empire
after Augustus was rapidly passed over and then, in the 9th grade,
they began again with the invasion of the barbarians. The origins of
Christianity and the entire primitive history of the Christian Church
were thus avoided. For the same reason, modern history ended in 1789.]

[Footnote 6326: M. Guizot, "Mémoires," vol. II.]

[Footnote 6327: An eminent university personage, a political character
and man of the world, said to me in 1850: "Pedagogy does not exist.
There are only personal methods which each finds out for himself and
eloquent phrases for effect on the public."--Bréal, "Quelques mots sur
l'instruction publique" (1872), p. 300: "France produces more works on
sericiculture than on the direction of colleges; rules and a few works
already ancient suffice for us."]

[Footnote 6328: On this day the monarchy of King Louis-Phillippe
collapsed and the Republic was declared. (SR.)]

[Footnote 6329: "L'Église et l'État sous la monarchie de juillet," by
Thureau-Dangin, 481-483.]

[Footnote 6330: Law of March 15, 1850 (Report by M. Beugnot).]

[Footnote 6331: Law of March 15, 1850, art. 21.]

[Footnote 6332: Law of March 15, 1850, article 21.]

[Footnote 6333: "Ambroise Rendu et l'Université de France," by E. Rendu,
p.128 (January, 1850). The discretionary power given to the prefects to
punish "the promoters of socialism" among the teachers in the primary
schools.--Six hundred and eleven teachers revoked.--There was no less
repression and oppression in the secondary and higher departments of
instruction.]

[Footnote 6334: Kingdom of July, (Louis-Philippe from 1830 to
24-2-1848.) (SR.)]

[Footnote 6335: De Riancey, ibid., II.., 476. (Words of M. Saint-Marc
Girardin.) "We instruct, we do not bring up (children); we cultivate
and develop the mind, not the heart."--Similar evidence, as for instance
that of M. Dubois, director of the Ecole Normale and of M. Guizot,
minister of public instruction. "Education is not up to the level of
instruction." (Exposition of the intent of the law of 1836.)]

[Footnote 6336: De Riancey, ibid., II., 401, 475.--Thureau-Dangin,
ibid., 145 and 146.--(Words of a fervent Catholic, M. de Montalembert, on
the trial of the Free School, Sept.29, 1831.) "It is with a heart still
distressed with these souvenirs (personal) that I here declare that,
were I a father, I would rather see my children crawl their whole life
in ignorance and idleness than expose them to the horrible risk I ran
myself of obtaining a little knowledge at the cost of their father's
faith, at the price of everything that is pure and fresh in their soul
and of honor and virtue in their breast."--(Testimony of a zealous
Protestant, M. de Gasparin.) "Religious education does not really
exist in the colleges. I remember with horror how I was on finishing
my national education. Were we good citizens? I do not know. But it
is certain that we were not Christians."--Testimony of a free-thinker,
Sainte-Beuve.) "In mass, the professors of the University, without being
hostile to religion, are not religious. The pupils feel this, and they
leave this atmosphere, not fed on irreligion, but indifferent.... One
goes away from the University but little of a Christian."]

[Footnote 6337: Boissier, ibid., p.712]

[Footnote 6338: In my youth, I was able to talk with some of those who
lived during the Consulate. All agreed in opinion. One, an admirer of
Condillac and founder of a boarding-school, had written for his pupils a
number of small elementary treatises, which I still possess.]

[Footnote 6339: Charles Hamel, "Histoire de Juilly," pp. 413, 419
(1818).--Ibid., 532, 665 (April 15, 1846.) The Tontine Association
replaced by a limited association (40 years) with a capital of 500,000
francs in 1000 shares of 500 francs each, etc.]

[Footnote 6340: For example, "Monge," the "École Alsacienne," the "École
libre des Sciences Politiques." Competent jurists recommend the founders
of a private school to organize it under the form of a commercial
association, with profit for its aim and not the public good. If the
founders of the school wish to maintain the free management of it they
must avoid declaring it "of public utility."]

[Footnote 6341: The "École Alsacienne" has been supported for some years
mainly by a subsidy of 40,000 francs allotted by the State. This year
the State furnishes, "Monge" and "Sainte-Barbe" with subsidies of
130,000 and 150,000 francs, without which they would become bankrupt and
close their doors. The State probably thus supports them so as to have
a field of pedagogic experiences alongside of its lycées, or to prevent
their being bought by some Catholic corporation.]

[Footnote 6342: Even when the masters are conciliatory or reserved
the two institutions face each other and the pupils are aware of the
antagonism; hence, they turn a cold shoulder to the pupils, education
and ideas of the rival institution. In 1852, and on four circular
journeys from 1863 to 1866, I was able to observe these sentiments which
are now very manifest.]

[Footnote 6343: The period of the annual school examinations in
France.--Tr.]

[Footnote 6344: This word means something more than an ordinary
"boarding-school," as the reader will see by the text, and is therefore
retained as untranslatable.--Tr.]

[Footnote 6345: Expositione universelle of 1889, "Rapport du jury,"
group II., 1st part, P.492.--Documents collected in the bureaus of
public instruction for 1887. (To the internes here enumerated must
be added those of private secular establishments, 8958 out of 20,174
pupils.)--Bréal, "Excursions pedagogiques," pp.293, 298.]

[Footnote 6346: All these figures are today in 1998, 100 years later,
no longer valid, they are only included in order to understand Taine's
insights into human nature and education in general. In 1994-5 there
were, in the State lycées and colleges over 4 millions students and
only those whose parents live too far from the schools, or some 9%, are
boarders. (SR.)]

[Footnote 6347: Today, in 1998, the number of pupils living on French
school premises amount to approximatively 10%, mostly because the
parents live too far away from the school. (SR.)]

[Footnote 6348: Bréal, ibid., pp. 10, 13. Id., "Quelques mots sur
l'instruction publique," p. 286. "The internat is nearly unknown in
Germany.... The director (of the gymnase) informs parents where families
can be found willing to receive boarders and he must satisfy himself
that their hospitality is unobjectionable.... In the new gymnases
there is no room for boarders."--Demogeot et Montucci, "Rapport sur
l'enseignement secondaire en Angleterre et en Ecosse," 1865.--(I
venture also to refer the reader to my "Notes sur l'Angleterre," for a
description of Harrow-on-the-Hill and another school at Oxford, made on
the spot.)]

[Footnote 6349: Taine, "Notes sur l'Angleterre," P.139. The pupils of
the superior class (sixth form), especially the first fifteen of the
class (monitors), the first pupil in particular, have to maintain order,
insure respect for the rules and, taking it all together, take the place
of our maitres d'étude.]

[Footnote 6350: Bréal, "Quelques mots, etc.," pp.281, 282. The same
in France, "before the Revolution,... except in two or three large
establishments in Paris, the number of pupils was generally sufficiently
limited.... At Port-Royal the number of boarders was never over fifty
at one time."--"Before 1764, most of the colleges were day-schools with
from 15 to 80 pupils," besides the scholarships. and peasant boarders,
not very numerous.--"An army of boarders, comprising more than one half
of our bourgeois class, under a drill regulated and overlooked by the
State, buildings holding from seven to eight hundred boarders--such
is what one would vainly try to find anywhere else, and which is
essentially peculiar to contemporary France."]

[Footnote 6351: Bréal, ibid., 287, id., "Excursions pedagogiques," p.
10. "I took part (with these pupils) in a supper full of gayety in the
room of the celebrated Latinist, Corssen, and I remember the thought
that passed through my mind when recurring to the meal we silently
partook of at Metz, two hundred of us, under the eye of the censor
and general superintendent, and menaced with punishment, in our cold,
monastic refectory."]

[Footnote 6352: Even though Taine had visited Eton and other English
schools, he appears to have a somewhat rosy picture of life inside these
institutions. I have been 9 years to a similar school and can assure the
reader that the headmaster's wife is no suitable substitute for a real
mother and her table does not replace one's own home. The rector of my
school once stated that boarding schools should only be resorted to when
one could not remain at home. It was my impression that this school had
two effects upon me: the first that I wanted, in spite of good grades,
to stop my studies and get a job and the second that I became, like
Taine, an opponent to the system. Later on in life I should come to
appreciate all the useful things like languages, literature, math and
physics which I had learned in this well-organized school. I also came
to understand that much worse than harsh discipline is no discipline and
no learning at all, something which happened to my children when they
attended, for one year only, the American School in Bangkok. (SR.)]

[Footnote 6353: Pelet de la Lozère, "Opinions de Napoleon au Conseil
d'État," p.172. (Session of April 7, 1807:) "The professors are to be
transferred from place to place in the Empire according to necessity."
--Decree of May 1, 1802, article 21: "The three functionaries in
charge of the administration and the professors of the lycées may be
transferred from the weakest to the strongest lycées and from inferior
to superior places according to the talent and zeal they show in their
functions."]

[Footnote 6354: A splendid description which also fits the international
civil servants working for the United Nations. I know this because I
was one for 32 years of my life. I suspect it also fits members of the
police forces, secret or not. (SR.)]

[Footnote 6355: Act of Jan. 11, 1811.--Decree of March 17, 1808,
articles 101 and 102.]

[Footnote 6356: Boissier ("Revue du Deux Mondes," Aug. 15, 1869, p.
919): "The externe lycées cost and the interne lycées bring in."]

[Footnote 6357: "Statistique de l'enseigncnient secondaire" (46,816
pupils, of which 33,092 internes and 13,724 externes).--Abbé Bougaud,
"Le Grand Péril de l'Eglise du France," p. 135.--"Moniteur," March 14,
1865, Speech of Cardinal Bonnechose in the Senate.]

[Footnote 6358: Name of the navy school-ship at Brest.--TR.]

[Footnote 6359: Bréal, "Quelques mots, etc.," p. 308: "We need not be
surprised that our children, once out of the college, resemble horses
just let loose, kicking at every barrier and committing all sorts of
capers. The age of reason has been artificially retarded for them five
or six years."]

[Footnote 6360: On the tone and turn of conversation among boys in
school on this subject in the upper classes and even earlier, I can
do no more than appeal to the souvenirs of the reader.--Likewise,
on another danger of the internat, not less serious, which cannot be
mentioned. (Here Taine undoubtedly refers to homosexuality. (SR.))]

[Footnote 6361: Bréal, "Excursions pédagogiques," pp. 326, 327.
(Testimony of two university graduates.) "The great college virtue is
comradeship, which comprises a bond of union among the pupils and hatred
of the master." (Bessot:) "Punishment irritates those who undergo it and
engenders punishment. The pupils become wearied: they fall into a state
of mute irritability coupled with contempt for the system itself and for
those who apply it. Unruliness furnishes them with the means of avenging
themselves or at least to relax their nerves; they commit disorders
whenever they can commit them with impunity.... The interdiction of an
act by authority is sufficient to excite the glory of committing it."
(A. Adam, "Notes sur l'administration du'un lycée.")--Two independent
and original minds have recounted their impressions on this subject,
one, Maxime Du Camp, who passed through the lycée system, and the other,
George Sand, who would not tolerate if for her son. (Maxime Du Camp,
"Souvenirs littéraires," and George Sand, "Histoire de ma vie.")]

[Footnote 6362: All this was in 1890, a long time ago, and if there was
much to learn then, how much do we not have to learn now? It helped,
however, to reduce the curriculum, that Latin and Greek was removed from
middle and senior high school programs and that international Socialism
through the Politically Correct movement, either forbade or rewrote
history, art and literature. In science, however, the young engineers
and scientists have a lot more to learn today and that in all branches
of science and especially in electronics. (SR.)]

[Footnote 6363: The so-called "Grandes Ecoles" which exist today
and which continue to form the French administrative, commercial
and scientific elite. They cannot be done away with since the French
universities have become accessible for an ever increasing number of
students since nearly 50% of the population pass their "bac" or final
high school exam. The level of this exam has decreased year after year
and only the preparatory schools for the Grande Ecoles continue to
insist on verifying diligence and attention. (SR.)]

[Footnote 6364: Taine expresses this in the following manner: "elle a
imaginé quantité de cours surérogatoires et de luxe,.." (SR.)]

[Footnote 6365: This year (1892) 1750 candidates were entered or 240
vacancies in the École Polytechnique, 230 for 30 places in the École des
Beaux-Arts (section of Architecture) and 266 for 24 places in the École
Normale (section of Literature).]

[Footnote 6366: 1890.]

[Footnote 6367: In France today, in 2000, there are still preparatory
schools which, in two or three years after their baccalaureat, prepare
the young applicants for the various competetive entrance examinations
to the "Grande Ecoles". 4000 specially selected students vie annually
with each other for the 400 places in the École Polytechnique. (SR.)]

[Footnote 6368: I was once, writes Taine, an examiner for admission to
a large special school and speak from experience.. Taine was well placed
to know about the system since he was first in the competetive entrance
exam (concours) to the École Normale Superior, and had also passed all
his other studies with great brilliance. (SR.)]

[Footnote 6369: A practical apprenticeship in the Faculty of Medicine
is less retarded; the future doctors, after the third year of their
studies, enter a hospital for two years, ten months of each year or 284
days of service, including an "obstetrical stage" of one months. Later,
on competing for the title of physician or surgeon in the hospitals and
for the aggrégation of the Faculty, the theoretical preparation is as
onerous as that of other careers.]

[Footnote 6370: "Souvenirs" by Chancellor Pasquier. (Written in 1843).
(Étienne Dennis Pasquier (Paris 1767--id. 1862) was a high official
under Napoleon, and President of the upper house under Louis-Phillippe
and author of "L'Histoire de mon temps", published posthumously in
1893. Librarie Plon, Paris 1893. On page 16 and 17 in volume I he fully
confirms Taine's views. (SR.)]

[Footnote 6371: Idem., Nobody attended the Lectures of the Law faculty
of Paris, except sworn writers who took down the professor's dictation
and sold copies of it. "These were nearly all supported by arguments
communicated beforehand... At Bourges, everything was got through within
five or six months at most."]

[Footnote 6372: "Souvenirs" by Chancellor Pasquier, vol. I. p.
17. Nowadays, "the young man who enters the world at twenty-two,
twenty-three or twenty-four years of age, thinks that he has nothing
more to learn; he commonly starts with absolute confidence in himself
and profound disdain for whoever does not share in the ideas and
opinions that he has adopted. Full of confidence in his own force,
taking himself at his own value, he is governed by one single thought,
that of displaying this force and this estimate himself immediately so
as to demonstrate what he is worth." This must have been written around
1830. (SR.)]

[Footnote 6373: This last quality is given by Sainte-Beuve.]

[Footnote 6374: Dunoyer, "De la liberté du travail" (1845), II.,119. The
extraordinary progress of England in the mechanical arts, according to
English engineers, "depends much less on the theoretical knowledge of
scholars than on the practical skill of the workmen who always succeed
better in overcoming difficulties than cultivated minds." For example,
Watt, Stephenson, Arkwright, Crampton and, in France, Jacquart.]

[Footnote 6375: Today, in year 2000, the socialist revolutionaries
have, through the Human Rights activities broken the chain between the
generations, forbidden the parents, the teachers and the supervisors
to correct and discipline their children and apprentices. The French
educational system, perfectly equal, still survives and is probably the
best in existence since it insists on teaching the students even if
a lot of the curriculum is a dead loss. The final product is still a
useful citizen and functionary, something which make France tick. (SR.)]

[Footnote 6376: Bréal, "Quelques mots," etc.,, p. 336. (He quotes M.
Cournot, a former rector, inspector-general, etc.:) "The Faculties know
that they would be subject to warnings on the part of the authorities
as well as to comparisons and regrettable desertions on the part of the
pupils if the proportion between candidates and admissions did not
vary between 45 and 50%... When the proportion of postponements reaches
between 50 and 555 the examiners admit with groans, considering the hard
times, candidates of which they would reject at least one half their
hands were not tied." (This was 100 years ago, today less than 30%
on the average, but more than 70% in certain bad areas, fail their
Baccalauréat. The curriculum has, however, been lightened so that about
50% of the population may end up passing their baccalauréat. Democracy
oblige. (SR.))]

[Footnote 6377: A machine for the forced feeding of ducks and geese to
make their liver grow to excessive proportions.]

[Footnote 6378: An old professor, after thirty years of service,
observed to me by way of summing up: "One half, at least, of our pupils
are not fitted to receive the instruction we give them."]

[Footnote 6379: Lately, the director of one of these schools remarked
with great satisfaction and still greater naïveté: "This school is
superior to all others of its kind in Europe, for nowhere else is what
we teach taught in the same number of years."]

[Footnote 6380: But what if Taine was mistaken? What if he, like so
many other highly talented and intelligent men, took his own superb
intelligence and imagination for granted? What if the talent of such
men is inherited? We know from identical twins how many of our
particularities have been given to us at birth. What if most men are
lazy and especially intellectually so, what if we can only be made to
learn and think when under great stress, the stress introduced by fear
of dismissal or hope of promotion or riches? Then the French system is
perhaps hard, perhaps expensive but certainly useful in producing
the great number of hardworking and competent and passively obedient
supervisors and civil servants that any large organization needs. (SR.)]

[Footnote 6381: "Souvenirs", by Pasquier (Etienne-Dennis, duc),
chancelier de France, in VI volumes, Librarie Plon, Paris 1893. Although
pupils were admitted in the preparatory Schools very early, "our navy,
engineer and artillery officers were justly esteemed the best instructed
in Europe, as able practically as theoretically; the position occupied
by artillery and engineer officers from 1792 in the French army
sufficiently attests this truth. And yet they did not know one tenth of
those who now issue from the preparatory schools. Vauban himself would
have been unable to undergo the examination for admission into the
Polytechnic School." There is then in our system "a luxury of science,
very fine in itself, but which is not necessary to insure good service
on land or at sea." The same in civil careers, with the bar, in the
magistracy, in the administration and even in literature and the
sciences. The proof of this is found in the men of great talent who,
after 1789, were prominent in the Constituent Assembly. In the new-born
University there was not one half of the demand for attainments as is
now exacted. There is nothing like our over-loaded baccalauréat, and yet
there issued from it Villemain, Cousin, Hugo, Lamartine, etc. No École
Polytechnique existed, and yet at the end of the eighteenth century in
France, we find the richest constellation of savants, Lagrange, Laplace,
Monge, Fourcroy, Lavoisier, Berthollet, Haüy, and others. (Since the
date of these souvenirs (1843) the defects in the French system have
gotten worse.]

[Footnote 6382: In England and in the United States the architect
and engineer produce more than we do with greater pliancy, fertility,
originality and boldness of invention, with a practical capacity at
least equal and without having passed six, eight or ten years in purely
theoretical studies.--Cf. Des Rousiers, "La Vie Américaine," p. 619:
"Our polytechnicians are scientific erudites.... The American engineer
is not omniscient as they were, he is special." "But, in his specialty
he has profound knowledge; he is always trying to make it more perfect
by additions, and he does more than the polytechnician to advance his
science" or his art. (Since Taine noted this times have changed; I once
put my 3 older sons into the American school in Bangkok (in 1972),
and not only did they not learn anything during their year there, they
actually lost some of their reading and writing skills and I had to
remove them as soon as I could. (SR.)).]

[Footnote 6383: In 1889 a law called Freycinet, France introduced 3
years of military service for all young men. Students and married men
were, subject to certain conditions, released after one year of service.
(SR.)]

[Footnote 6384: To facilitate his or her comprehension the reader
might replace the word Jacobin with the expression Socialist, Marxist,
national-socialist or Communist since they are all heirs to the
heritage left by the French Revolutionaries. (SR.)]

[Footnote 6385: IIIrd Republique lasted from 14-9-1870 until 13-7-1940.
(SR.)]

[Footnote 6386: Instruction is good, not in itself, but through the good
it does, and especially to those who possess or acquire it. If, simply
by raising his finger, a man could enable every French man or woman to
read Virgil readily and demonstrate Newton's binomial theory, this man
would be dangerous and ought to have his hands tied; for, should he
inadvertently raise his finger, manual labor would be repugnant and, in
a year or two, become almost impossible in France.]

[Footnote 6387: And so it happened. After the second world war, when
international Marxism became installed its agents throughout the Western
world, compulsory, unified education was pushed from the age of 14 to
16 and a majority of young remained in school till after their 18th
birthday, an education which successfully made them believe that the
attitudes and values they were taught were the only valid ones. (SR.)]

[Footnote 6388: Liard, "Universités et Facultés," p. 39 and following
pages.--"Rapport sur la statistique comparée de l'instruction," vol.
II. (1888).--"Exposition universelle de 1889" ("Rapport du jury," groupe
II., part I., p.492.)]

[Footnote 6389: In 1994 there were in France 1389 public and 841 private
lycées (SR.)]

[Footnote 6390: Liard, ibid., p. 77.]

[Footnote 6391: Also called the preparatory classes, the so-called
math-sup and math-spe of the preparatory schools attached to the state
lycées and attended by selected 18-20 year-old students. (SR.)]

[Footnote 6392: These figures were obtained in the bureaux of the
direction of primary instruction.--The sum-total of 582,000,000 francs
is composed of 241,000,000, furnished directly by the State, 28,000,000
furnished by the departments, and 312,000, 000 furnished by the
communes. The communes and departments being, in France, appendices of
the State, subscribe only with its permission and under its impulsion.
Hence the three contributions furnish only one.--Cf. Turlin,
"Organisation financière et budget de l'Instruction primaire," p. 61.
(In this study, the accounts are otherwise made up. Certain
expenses being provided for by annuities are carried into the annual
expenditure:) "From June 1, 1878, to Dec. 31, 1887, expenses of first
installation, 528 millions; ordinary expenses in 1887, 173 millions."]

[Footnote 6393: Law of June 16, 1881 (on gratuitous education).]

[Footnote 6394: Law of March 28, 1882 (on obligatory education).]

[Footnote 6395: National temperament must here be taken into
consideration as well as social outlets. Instruction out of proportion
with and superior to condition works differently with different nations.
For the German adult it is rather soothing and a derivative; with the
adult Frenchman it is especially an irritant or even an explosive.]

[Footnote 6396: It might be interesting to note what Mark Twain wrote on
India education about the same period when Taine wrote this text:
"apparently, then, the colleges of India were doing what our high
schools have long been doing--richly over-supplying the market for
highly educated service; and thereby doing a damage to the scholar,
and through him to the country. At home I once made a speech deploring
the injuries inflicted by the High School in making handicrafts
distasteful to boys who would have been willing to make a living at
trades and agriculture if they had but had the good luck to stop with
the common school. But I made no converts. Not one, in a community
overrun with educated idlers who were above following their fathers'
mechanical trades, yet could find no market for their book-knowledge."]

[Footnote 6397: Among the pupils who receive this primary instruction
the most intelligent, who study hardest, push on and pass an examination
by which they obtain the certificate that qualifies them for elementary
teaching. The consequences are as follows. Comparative table of annual
vacancies in the various services of the prefecture of the Seine and of
the candidates registered for these places. ("Débats," Sep. 16, 1890:)
Vacancies for teachers, 42; number of registered candidates, 1,847.
Vacancies for female teachers, 54; number of candidates, 7,139.--7,085
of these young women, educated and with certificates, and who cannot
get these places, must be content to marry some workman, or become
housemaids, and are tempted to become lorettes. (From the church of
Notre Dame de Lorette in Paris in the neighborhood of which many young,
pretty women of easy virtue were to be found. (SR.))]

[Footnote 6398: Taine wrote this when compulsory education in France
kept the children in school until their 13th year. Today in year 2000
they must stay until they are 16 years old but more often continue until
they are 19--23 years old. (SR.)]

[Footnote 6399: In certain cases, the school commission may grant
exemptions. But there art two or three parties in each commune, and the
father of a family must stand well with the dominant party to obtain
them.]

[Footnote 63100: After the second world war the world, helped by the
United Nations, have pushed obligatory education further and further,
and the number of dissatisfied youth have consequently increased and
increased. (SR.)]

[Footnote 63101: Law of March 28, 1882, and Oct. 30, 1886.]

[Footnote 63102: "Journal des Débats," Sep. 1, 1891. Report of the
Commission on Statistics: "In 1878-9 the number of congregationist
schools was 23,625 with 2,301,943 pupils."]

[Footnote 63103: Bureaux of the direction of public instruction, budget
of 1892.]

[Footnote 63104: "Exposition universelle" of 1889. "Rapport général," by
M. Alfred Picard, p. 367. At the same date, the number of pupils in
the public schools was 4,500,119.--"Journal des Débats," Sep. 12, 1891,
Report of the commission of statistics. "From 1878-79 to 1889-90, 5,063
public congregationist schools are transformed into secular schools or
suppressed; at the time of their transformation they enumerated in
all 648,824 pupils.--Following upon this secularization, 2,839 private
congregationist schools are opened as competitors and count in 1889-90,
354,473 pupils."--In ten years public secular instruction gains 12,229
schools and 973,380 pupils; public congregationist instruction
loses 5,218 schools and 550,639 pupils. On the other hand, private
congregationist instruction gains 3,790 schools and 413,979 pupils."]

[Footnote 63105: Turlin, ibid, p. 61. (M. Turlin enumerates "104,765
functionaries," to which must be added the teaching, administrative and
auxiliary staff of teachers of the 173 normal schools and their 3000
pupils, all gratuitous). (In 1994 there were 247 000 primary school
teachers (instituteurs) in public schools in France. Taine could not
foresee that the French schools and universities should become an
enormous industry, the number of teachers and universities multiplied by
ten and the number of government functionaries multiplied by 20 and that
the annual 50 000 vacancies should find more than a million candidates,
the young overeducated persons dreaming of becoming functionaries and
hence "safe" for life. (SR.))]

[Footnote 63106: In this respect, very instructive indications may be
found in the autobiography of Jules Valès, "l'Enfant," "le Bachelier,"
and "l'Insurge." Since 1871, not only in literature do the successful
works of men of talent but, again, the abortive attempts of impotent
innovators and blasted half-talents, converge to this point."]


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